KUALA LUMPUR: Within a single September week, the seeming rise in political fortunes of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) was whipsawed by two separate developments. One handed the party what would become a double-edged sword and another has plunged its newly-won state government into open constitutional warfare.
But let’s step back a bit, because understanding the context of this whipsaw UMNO is now faced with is important.
Just weeks earlier, UMNO and the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition that it leads appeared to be riding the wave of a genuine revival. It retained control of the Johor state government in July in a landslide electoral victory, before recapturing in August the Negeri Sembilan state government that was previously controlled by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition.
UMNO was entering the fourth quarter of the political year with confidence. It was capped at the party’s three-day congress that began on Sep 9 with its leaders claiming that the so-called “Blue Wave”, the colour shorthand for both UMNO and BN, was ready to sweep the country with the backing of the country’s politically dominant Malays.
Its president, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who is also one of the two deputy prime ministers in Mr Anwar’s Unity Government, even called for an early general election, which is only due sometime in early 2028.
The revival story struck an even more dramatic note when delegates from the right-wing Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) turned up at the assembly and were warmly greeted by UMNO leaders, signalling that the door to a new Malay-unity pact had swung open again.
