For fifty years Umno has skillfully manipulated racial and religious sentiments in Malaysia to win votes.

Umno's attack dogs in the vernacular mass media are forever painting DAP or Hindraf 5 or Teresa Kok or or Lim Guan Eng or Karpal Singh as sworn enemies of Islam or the Malays.

Unless Umno's propaganda machine can instill and provoke bigotry, racial egoism, ethnic chauvinism, tribal triumphalism, race anxieties, xenophobia or paranoia, Umno's leaders will become redundant and irrelevant.

Unfortunately for Umno, even the rural Malays no longer fall for that racial divide and rule approach to politics.

In the eyes of the general public, the Umno playbook comprises bribes, corruption and crossovers (the Perak fiasco), threatening ISA use (Hindraf 5), threatening with the Sedition Act (Raja Petra and KickDeFella), threatening violence (waving a keris and promising to bathe it in blood), physical abuse (water cannons for Reformasi-Bersih-Hindraf protesters), mobbing elderly men in wheelchairs (Karpal Singh), detaining MPs against their will (Teresa Kok), deleting salaries of opposition MPs (Gobind Singh Deo), circulating private photos of MPs (Elizabeth Wong), threatening to burn down public buildings (SCAH) and assaulting activists (Apcet IIconference).

Quite frankly, many ordinary citizens privately expect Umno will again be tempted to resort to extreme strategies to retain power.

It is no secret that many Malaysians have long blamed Umno's irresponsible racial politics for outbreaks of ethnic disturbances and violence in the past including May 13.

I need not point out the obvious statistic that ethnic minorities will suffer disproportionately in any outbreaks of ethnic violence in Malaysia - staged or otherwise - and they are particularly wary of Umno's recent spate of crude fascist, bullying, threatening and criminal behaviour recently.

Since everyone expects Umno to turn up the ethnic and racial heat and inflammatory rhetoric to win back Malay-Muslim votes between now and the next general elections, I urge Malay-Muslim leaders in PAS and PKR to take a strong public stand now on human rights and non-violence as fundamental non-negotiable principles guiding national-level politics in Malaysia.

Upholding laudable standards of common decency would highlight the racist, fascist, bullying, thieving and destructive behaviour of Umno leaders.

Pak Lah for all his faults as prime minister was never ever a big fan of hardline racial and religious politics, inflammatory racial rhetoric, thuggish mob behaviour or callous brutality.

Unfortunately,ordinary Malaysians cannot be sure of the depths to which other Umno wanna-be prime ministers are prepared to sink in order to secure unlimited personal power and worldly wealth.

I strongly urge DAP, PAS, and PKR leaders to take strong public stand on non-violence and human rights as the inviolable fundamental principles of racial, religious and ethnic politics in Malaysia in order to set a minimum standard of decency by which Umno leaders and activists should be forced to abide.

Setting the standards now may lessen the risks of ethnic chaos and racial disturbances that irresponsible Umno leaders may be tempted to sponsor in future.