The UMNO Dilemma - Change or Become Irrelevant

Change is always difficult, especially in the best of times when one becomes complacent and believes that the good times will roll on forever.
But we can learn from history that all empires decline and finally get replaced by a new empire that will also go through the same cycle of prosperity, complacency and decline.

Some people feel that the USA is in such a stage of decline. The basic reason it carries on as the world "superpower" is because the world depends on the USA to continue its conspicuous consumption because once the world decides that the USA is actually a bankrupt nation that has gone out of control, the USA empire will disappear.
This a a sort of doomsday scenario.

In Malaysia, the problems with UMNO too are somewhat similar. For many years the party has been living on borrowed time with people being convinced that without UMNO, the nation will be plunged into anarchy. Even though most people oppose the strict laws like ISA and OSA that have managed to paper over the serious problems of corruption, judicial interefrence and religious intolerance, most were reluctant to do anything about the problems.

Well the last General Elections show that people have decided to take positive action by handing out the most serious setback for the BN. UMNO as the backbone of the BN must now seriously taking the lead in non-racist politics.

Many feel that the entire Supreme Council of the BN should resign to allow newer leaders with a clean uncorrupted history to lead the BN to a more secured future.

What of the present leaders? Perhaps the BN grassroots should consider granting a few of them the mandate to help clean up the mess within a fixed mandate of say 2 years to guide the untainted leaders on the past mistakes.

It is possible that the BN may lose the next elections and some say even before that. Those who join the party must now realise that the road to immense wealth is not going to be through politics.