Umno deputy chief calls for new Malay agenda after GE15 drubbing

KUALA LUMPUR - Umno deputy president Mohamad Hasan on Wednesday urged Malaysia’s longest ruling party to review its Malay-centric agenda, as delegates

assembled for the party’s first meeting

since its poor showing in the 15th general election in November 2022.

Datuk Seri Mohamad, who is Defence Minister in the current government led by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, said the grand old party has to change its approach towards the Malay electorate and also its way of opposing other parties’ ideologies, as he attempted to rationalise Umno’s working relationship with its new government partner Democratic Action Party (DAP), which Umno had demonised for decades.

“The factor that motivates Malays to support or reject us is not our stand regarding DAP,” Mr Mohamad said, pointing out that Umno’s support has been on the decline for the past four elections even though the party had consistently criticised the Chinese-dominated DAP.

Umno won only 26 seats in the last election, but joined its long-time rival Pakatan Harapan (PH)

to form a government

after the polls resulted in a hung Parliament. For years, Umno’s assemblies had echoed the chant of “no Anwar, no DAP”, referring to Datuk Seri Anwar, PH chief and now Premier.

Mr Mohamad reiterated that Umno has not formally joined PH but said that

working with PH,

instead of former partner Perikatan Nasional (PN), was more palatable to Umno’s own positioning among the Malay electorate and also due to its current government partners not “pretending” with it.

He said that working with PH enables Umno to become the strongest political representative for Malays within the government, instead of being drowned out as the third-largest Malay party were it to be in a government with PN, led by former premier Muhyiddin Yassin.

Both PN and PH – the two biggest blocs – had raced to secure Umno’s backing to enable them to form a government after

the November polls

. PN is mainly comprised of Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) and Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu), both Malay-Muslim parties that defeated Umno in many of its strongholds.

Mr Mohamad said that PN’s mission was to “bury” Umno, and being partners with the predominantly Malay-Muslim coalition would further diminish its share of political capital in the country.

Umno, along with the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition that it leads, had been the ruling party of Malaysia for 61 years until its 2018 election defeat to PH – which then had counted Bersatu as one of its members.

But it had been in the opposition for only a brief 22 months. It returned to power by joining hands with a newly formed PN after Bersatu’s mass defection forced the collapse of the PH government mid-term in 2020, before opting to contest independently as BN in the last election, where it won only 30 seats – the poorest performance in its history.

The Umno grassroots’ acceptance of the party decision to back PH will likely be tested further over the next few days as thousands of delegates meet for the first time since the general election at the party headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, with much of the focus being on party president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who was one of the chief engineers of the cooperation with PH.

Umno’s four-day assembly runs from Wednesday to Saturday – and it will also set the dates for a party leadership election that must be held by May 19. Zahid, who is facing multiple graft charges in Malaysian courts and is Deputy Prime Minister in the current administration, is expected to face a leadership challenge in the party polls, which could have a direct impact on Mr Anwar’s government.