COMMENT | When the vice-president of Umno, Mohamed Khaled Nordin, is in denial that Umno can collapse – and is collapsing – then Umno is finished as this is being written.

Throughout the history of Umno since 1946, no four MPs have left the party. Yet Mustapa Mohamed, one of the most stellar figures in Umno when he was in the government as the international industry and trade minister, has become the fourth to throw in the towel after the 14th general election.

No one in Bersatu or Pakatan Harapan courted him to bail ship. Yet he did. In his statement to the press yesterday, Tok Pa, as he is better known, admitted to the whole of Malaysia that Umno is not undergoing any reform.

In other words, despite losing the popular vote at the federal and state levels since 2008, Umno is still in a state of stupor.

Being in a state of stupor does not mean that Umno is stupid. Rather, it means Umno is listing, drifting, and sinking, all at once. For the lack of a better word, Umno cannot even wake up from its intoxication with money politics and grand larceny.

Wasn't it Khaled who said that Umno can undergo a form of "islah ," which in Islamic terminology means renewal or restructuring? In my rebuttal to his statement yesterday, I warned Khaled that he was looking at the fate of Umno through the wrong lenses.

He was looking at Umno, in terms of how loud the party war drums can beat. He was not looking at Umno in terms of how Malays and Malaysians have rejected them since the high-water mark of the administration of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in 2004.

In fact, as early as 1999, the year that saw the beginning of PKR under Anwar Ibrahim, the "urban, rural and sub-rural Malays(ia)" – the three concepts used by Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad – have rejected Umno wholesale.

To the degree Malays and bumiputera were forgiving, Abdullah got a two-thirds majority in Parliament in 2004. But the size of Parliament was indeed gerrymandered to 222 seats under him.

However, despite the massive electoral malapportionment under the Abdullah administration, which needed five Bersih rallies that totalled tens of millions of Malaysians to reject its unfairness, Umno and BN still cannot win the popular vote with such massive structural advantage from 2005 onwards.

On May 9, 2018, what was predicted by Mahathir, Muhyiddin Yassin, Anwar, Daim Zainuddin and Rafidah Aziz, five of Umno’s former luminaries, all came true. Umno will fall, they said, and it did.

Lost in Umno’s hands

Former minister Rais Yatim referred pejoratively to Umno as people whose "kaki tak menjejak Bumi" (feet don't touch the ground). He is right.

There are now 94 bumiputera development agencies, 11 Malaysia Plans, and three industrial master plans, plus three bumiputera congresses held in 1962, 1965 and more recently in 2018. Yet Umno was silent on how to help the Malays, and consequently, the bumiputeras and Malaysians in general.  

Their former president Najib Abdul Razak, in turn, was fiddling with his Facebook to defend his multibillion ringgit donations from some Arab prince, by showing letters which were not even signed by the prince. That's how low Umno has become.

In fact, just last Sunday alone, The Edge Weekly reported that 94 of these bumiputera development agencies were endowed with various funds from the government to spawn close to "1,170 GLCs", ostensibly to help the bumiputeras and Malays.

Yet, the bumiputera and Malays remained lost in the hands of Umno. Not surprisingly, Umno's total popular votes in an election which saw nearly 83 percent of all eligible Malaysians showing up was just a meagre 33 percent.

In 2004, Umno and BN’s share of popular votes used to be 80 percent at least. No political party that was given the reins of power to handle the finances and reforms of the country has seen a drop of more than 50 percent of the votes between 2004 and 2015. Umno did. 2015 also marked the release of the US Department of Justice report on 1MDB.

That grand larceny was happening right under the very noses of Umno and BN can only prove how gaudy and ineffective both have become. One might as well add MIC too. If Umno cannot stop the blood-letting and the sheer erosion of support, what more can Umno do now or in future ?

Consequently, when Mahathir, Muhyiddin and Mukhriz Mahathir, three of the biggest names in Umno, all resigned together with their supporters, Umno was over.

Indeed, when they created a new Malay front in 2016 called Bersatu, it was no surprise where half of the Malay popular votes eventually went: Pakatan Harapan.

To be sure, five out of ten Malays, in other words, decided to throw their support to Pakatan Harapan, if not more, on May 9, 2018.

Even the Kadazans, Dayaks, Muruts and Bajaus in Sabah and Sarawak woke up from their slumber on that day to destroy Umno and BN.

Yet, Khaled and all the tired faces in the Umno supreme council insisted that they could survive the people's onslaught and rejection of their corrupt and toxic racial and religious politics.

Former Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin even blamed the current president of Umno, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, for Mustapa’s "departure".

To be sure, the departure of Mustapa is an indictment of the failure of Zahid to lead and reform Umno. Had Umno gone with Khairy as president in their recent party election, perhaps Umno would still have a sliver of a chance to resuscitate itself.

But now, as Mahathir said, all is “too late”, even for Tok Pa.

More alarmingly, even Nazri Abdul Aziz, who is known for his brash and gangster-like tactics and rhetoric, has pledged to support Anwar in the upcoming by-election in Port Dickson.

A trickle becoming a torrent

In the days to come, more MPs in Umno will switch their allegiance. There is no need to say to whom. But they will quit Umno. What is a trickle will be a torrent, as had happened in Sarawak, where one after the other immediately left BN.

Indeed, the more Zahid tries to protect the corruption of Najib and Rosmah Mansor, the sooner Umno will hit the seabed. Najib has been charged with six counts of criminal breach of trust, while his wife will be reportedly slapped with twenty charges. 

The end of Umno is nigh. It will not happen at night, when Khaled is soundly asleep. It is happening now, even as this is being written. As God once promised to all evildoers, "When the world is about to end, even mothers who are suckling their babies will be shocked" by the scale and speed of the fall.

This is just rewards for a party that ransacked and pillaged Malaysia to enrich themselves. In Islam, one of the worst crimes, aside from killing another human being, is to "take the rights of the orphans." 

Umno and BN, in their hues and all, entered that zone many times over, and did not come back to even offer Malays and Malaysians an apology. Little wonder the people's power was unleashed with the guidance of God on May 9.

As for Khairy, he must be wondering how to revive Umno, when all the old feudal lords in Umno are in disarray.

Some want to form a toxic alliance with PAS. Others want to dally with the possibility of working with Harapan, only to try to destroy it by making it a Pakatan Malaysia.

But why should Harapan betray the hopes of Malaysians? They voted for Pakatan Harapan, not 'Pakatan Malaysia.'

In designating Harapan as their hope and vehicle, Malaysians from all walks of life were indeed choosing a new Malaysia, one that will also see a strong transition from Mahathir to Anwar as the eighth prime minister. When this is all happening, Khairy and Khaled will rue their differences.

One or both of them would have to think about how to reach out to Harapan, without trying to introduce their brand of money politics to the new coalition again.

RAIS HUSSIN is a supreme council member of Bersatu and heads its policy and strategy bureau.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.