Ilham Centre recommends 10 steps to treat Umno

SHAH ALAM - Ilham Centre recommends 10 steps to treat Umno after its major defeat in the 2023 State Elections on Aug 12.

Ilham Centre Research Fellow Mujibu Abd Muis said the first step that was most crucial to be taken was to solve the character issues that were squeezing the party.

He said it was based on the research done, as Umno had problems with strengths when two groups within the party's grassroots and leadership gave differing views towards efforts to revive the party.

"The grassroots clearly wanted a drastic change in Umno leadership and stated they were no longer confident with the Umno leadership, from the president to senior leaders who joined the central leadership.

"However, at a leadership level, they stated that Umno could be repaired if they could convince the grassroots who were tossed aside to return to Umno as they were still considered assets and capable of contributing," he said.

He said such as a panellist when tabling the research ‘Caring for Malays: What should Umno do?’ in the Post-15th General Election (GE15) Wacana titled ‘Six State Elections: What Happened?' aired live from the Malay Research Academy, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur on Friday.

The elections in six states showed BN's poor performance, with only 19 seats out of 108 contested seats.

Mujibu explained the different considerations and clearly showed that the strength of Umno was limited.

"Why is it limited? Because if the Umno leadership continued to want to take in older members into the party to make changes, it was as if they were simply placing a new coat on top. They wanted change, but they continued to be led by old members.

"The strength issue happened at all levels of Umno, from the branches, divisions, states, and central," he added.

Mujibu said the second, third, fourth, and fifth steps for Umno were to restore ethics and integrity, ideology, and principles, and carry out internal and policy reforms.

He said the sixth and seventh steps were for Umno to perform negotiations with coalition partners as the party is no longer the ‘big brother’ of its coalition and they must create a win-win situation to establish effective communication within their party.

"The eighth step is that Umno must focus on the youth because, in the context of the state elections, Umno had lost in all aspects, mainly from the point of view of communication, strategy, support, and selling narratives, as they were not seen as being youth-friendly but were seen as an elitist party.

"Step nine was the problem of Umno compared to other parties; they wouldn’t listen to data, they wouldn’t care, and they were belittled. This matter must be given attention.

"Lastly Umno must communicate with the public. They can no longer deflect as this was a major Umno problem; they continued to remail communicating at elite levels and hoped the elite leadership would communicate below them, and the elites would also prevent certain information from reaching the higher ups," he said.