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| Can this man reform UMNO, and therefore BN? Probably not. |
Politics is a cut-throat game. Once you're down, you're out. Usually that's the case, anyway. Although it's rare, sometimes you do see political second acts. Just look at Dr M, the former BN strongman who reinvented himself as an opposition leader and is today the PM of a Pakatan coalition government.
Can BN as a coalition reinvent itself? It's not impossible but it's pretty close to it.
Firstly, BN is disintegrating as we speak. We've seen BN reps switching sides in Sabah leading to the crumbling of BN's one-day-old government there. In addition, four Sabah parties have already left BN. Over in Sarawak, the BN-linked parties there are looking at a "realignment" that could see them discard their links to BN. In the peninsula, party-hopping has resulted in Perak falling under Pakatan. In Johor Pakatan now has a 2/3rds majority thanks to some BN reps switching over.
And this is just the beginning, folks. As more and more BN-linked parties and reps jump ship, the ones left behind will naturally have to ask themselves, "Do I really want to be left behind?"
Secondly, there is no reform of BN without a reform of UMNO. But is UMNO capable of changing? Najib has stepped down but in his place is Zahid Hamidi, hardly a reformer. And frankly, neither is Hishammuddin or Khairy, although he's casting himself as one now.
Without the power and resources that come with controlling the federal government, what impact can BN make? Even when it controlled the federal government, it had difficulty attracting fresh talent. Now that it is out of power and bleeding reps by the day, how can it attract anyone of substance? What's its pitch going to be, "Join us and become an opposition politician"?
Basically, it's only got its remaining (and fast dwindling) members, and must try to reform itself from within. Is that even possible?
BN is a coalition that for six decades has only known how to operate with the tremendous power of incumbency. UMNO is a party that is used to being the big brother whose words everyone else has to follow. When it says jump, the others would ask: "how high?". That is the kind of mode it is used to operating in. Now if UMNO says jump, the rest will tell it to go fly a kite.
It'll be interesting to see if UMNO can even convince its partners like MCA, MIC, Gerakan and the various East Malaysian parties to stay put. Whereas before it could give them some crumbs, now it's got nothing to offer them. No ministerships, no patronage, nothing.
For four decades, the opposition parties were just a token presence in parliament until 1999 when they started to work together and make some serious inroads in the general election that year. It would take three more election cycles, and nearly two decades later, before it finally toppled the government. In total, it took the opposition slightly more than six decades to achieve this feat (1957 to 2018).
It probably won't take BN another six decades to become a viable political player again but it will probably take longer than two decades. So let's take the middle ground and say that it will take about four decades.
The bad news for Khairy -- the man who is convinced his destiny is to become PM of Malaysia -- is that he will be 82 years old by then. The good news is that Dr M was 92 when he achieved his political second act. So, perhaps KJ can do it after all. The problem is KJ is no Dr M.
