By Syauqi Jamil
KUALA LUMPUR: Former Umno man today said that the party’s initial struggle had died as he likens the oldest political party in Malaysia as nothing more than a stagnant pond.
Former Sungai Benut MP Tawfik Ismail said Umno has no ‘inlet’ nor ‘outlet’, making it impossible for new beautiful species to survive.
Due to this, he said that what’s left within the leading component party in the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition are merely ‘bottom feeders’.
“All that can survive are the bottom feeders. That is what Umno was towards the end of its term in office. Paklah (Abdullah Badawi) and Najib (Razak) could only choose among the bottom feeders for the government.
“There was no inlet that allowed new species to come in. The pond had died in 1986. What you had left is what appeared to be Umno but isn’t,” he said this today.
Tawfik was one of the keynote speakers present during the launching of ‘Anatomy of an Electoral Tsunami’, a book co-authored by Lim Teck Ghee, S Thayaparan and Terence Netto.
Tawfik who is also the eldest son of former Deputy Prime Minister Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, said that it is sad that Umno still haven’t learned its lesson even after being swept away by the electoral tsunami during the May elections.
He said this based on the same ‘bottom feeders’ holding the torch in the party, as well as their persistence in harping on religious and racial matters.
“When the wave swept over what it should have done was to replace the water in the pond amd bring in the new species.
“Unfortunately it wasn’t enough. The events after the election shows there wasn’t much change,” he said.
