In its column in Mingguan Malaysia, Awang Selamat — the nom-de-plume representing Umno-owned Utusan Malaysia’s collective editorial voice — advised the BN’s anchor party against giving serious consideration to the proposal to dismantle the racial boundaries that have long been identified with the coalition, and which it insists has been and will continue to be the recipe for its success in elections.
“Be confident that Umno, PBB, MCA, MIC and the other component parties will function more efficiently with the status quo,” it said, adding that “a single party is only an excuse, not a resolution” to the challenge of winning back support from the Chinese, who form about a third of the country’s 28 million population.
The suggestion to collapse the separate compartments of BN was first floated by the Chinese-majority Gerakan days after the divisive May 5 polls, and gained momentum when it was echoed by several other BN component leaders.
The 13-party BN coalition maintained its hold on power but its non-Malay/Bumiputera components suffered a serious drubbing.
It managed to score 133 seats in the 222-member Parliament largely due to Umno’s wins; the Malay party alone took 88 seats, nearly equal to the combined haul of the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) opposition, which won 89 seats, seven more than the DAP-PKR-PAS alliance had got in Election 2008.
Umno’s supreme council had decided at its meeting to study the idea further.
But Umno’s information chief Datuk Ahmad Maslan yesterday panned the proposal, saying it is inappropriate and difficult to implement as it would not be able to represent the interests of all races in the country.
“I personally do not agree that Umno should be dissolved to create a single BN party without any components, and I’m certain that the 3.4 million Umno members too do not agree,” he was reported saying in Pontian by state news wire Bernama.
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