Maybe UMNO should court HINDRAF

PR had a free ride under the HINDRAF banner for GE12 and yet today they won’t even engage with them. People are not blind and they do understand what racism is.

By Jakun Malaysia

With the election on the horizon, everyone seems to be wary of the direction of the nation with the usual politicing taking centre field.

The public who seems to know everything that happens around us which ends up in kedai kopi gossip seems to read too much into the gimmickry both by UMNO and PR. The showdown comes and goes and nothing changes for the general public in terms of policies or the betterment of the society.

UMNO, having castigated HINDRAF with anything and everything that they could find under the advice of their mandores was eventually brought down in GE12 with unexpected loses in the election.

They even went to the extent of legalising and inaugurating the superficial political movement that calls itself MMS within a month of its application although MIC would have naturally been against it. Imagine how desperate UMNO was? As far as PPP is concerned, it is a shade of its originators, the Seenivasagam brothers, so it does not even deserve a mention like other Indian-based parties like IPF and god knows how many more Indian party splinters.

Let’s look at Sabah & Sarawak; you have four different parties in each respective state being a part of the coalition with guaranteed either parliamentary or state seats.

Looking into the decision-makers in West Malaysia which is definitely multicultural, official coalition partners with some chicken feed by the UMNO supremos are only MCA, MIC, GERAKAN & PPP.

Now you have twenty-one other officially registered parties and one unregistered party ie (HRP). Naturally, you can guess whose affliance the leaders of these parties are fed except for PSM. You don’t see them much in public until election time.

PR thinks with its three (3) parties they have the cat in a bag although if not for the uprise of HINDRAF they would be standing high and dry like what happened in 1990 & 1999.

PR had a free ride under the HINDRAF banner for GE12 and yet today they won’t even engage with them. People are not blind and they do understand what racism is.

UMNO may have committed atrocities, courtesy of Dr Mahathir in the past, but they had their brothers in arms ie the rest of the elite and cari makan middleclass non-Malays who equally neglect the poorer brethren of their society. I don’t know whether UMNO has learnt its lesson, but I can see that they are trying to make amends like accepting a superficial party like MMS into their fold and approving PSM and KITA. Maybe UMNO wants to make a change, maybe it was misdirected by their mandores like how PR is, who knows, when it is a bread and butter issue for the society?

In semblance to Suqiu, if many would remember, their demand was similar to HINDRAF back in 1999 but naturally eclipsed by the one and only Dr Mahathir after inflicting fear and favor in exchange.

Fortunately HINDRAF is immune to fear and favor, and that carried the spirit of consciousness for the community and the torch is still there after 4 years by its spirited followers. If PR thinks that this is not relevant, then I think it is high time UMNO makes an attempt to engage HINDRAF and lay down a blueprint if they feel that even after 54 years of faults and errors through their mandores, they have the humility to ensure they are the best movement to ensure the progress of its people irrespective of origin.