There’s some irony when a party leader has to reverse the work of a predecessor. This is exactly what is happening in Britain at the moment.
By September this year, the people of Britain who defied David Cameron, another Conservative prime minister, and voted to leave the European Union in the Brexit in 2016, will have a new renationalised rail network.Years of neglect will most likely require the injection of new infrastructure funds using taxpayers’ money instead of private investment, very much against the key tenets of the Conservative party.
To stay relevant and to remain popular with the voters, Umno has to chop off any “gangrenous” parts of the party controlled by some well-known warlords. Umno, as a national party, requires not only new leaders but also new strategies. In fact, a series of in-depth strategies to be implemented fairly rapidly and immediately, too, if it wants to stay relevant and not get binned into Malaysian political history.What was Umno’s previous agenda for the Malays? What started out as the New Economic Policy which was never successful anyway, morphed into a repeat of the same instruments that was only beneficial to the elite group.
NEM is nothing but a half-baked or an overcooked initiative. Many economists looked at it as comprised of the most uncreative ideas doomed for failure, copied and recycled by proponents who do not understand how to assist the Malays and to make their economy actually work.NEM promulgated further wrongdoings. It also boosted the confidence of an inept leadership to come up with bigger schemes to deceive their own government and corporations through bonds and borrowings.
Almost RM50 billion of debt allocation, which could have been spent in fighting Covid-19, is going down the drain due to debt repayment and settlement.