ALLOW me to correct an unintentionally misleading impression that may have been left in the minds of some of your readers by Shannon Teoh’s thoughtful “More parties weighing in for the Malay votes” (NST, May 25).

It was not my purpose to tell Umno what to do.

It is more than enough for me to try to grab the attention of politicians in Australia, where I am a citizen, to press upon them my views. I do not seek that role or right here in Malaysia.

Rather than proffering gratuitous advice, I sought to make a difficult historical and analytical judgment.

Umno, I want to suggest, cannot go on forever maintaining itself electorally as a sectional communitarian party and at the same time, rule the country as a moderate and mediating centrist party.

Sooner or later — and with the accelerating momentum of political developments in this country, it may come sooner than many people expect — Umno will have to choose, and find a way, to be a genuine and consistent centrist party and to live with the consequences.

Among those consequences, it will not be able to command all of the Islamist Malay vote or the bangsa Melayu Malay vote.

It may have to concede some of those votes in order to position itself as the credible leader of a widely supported governing party that enjoys the confidence alike of many Malays who recently voted against it and of the supporters and leaders of its non-Malay partner parties in the governing coalition.

It may have to accept openly that it is not as Islamist as Pas and that it cannot forever, in the face of the vast transformation and diversification of peninsular Malay society that it has promoted over the last half-century, call for or expect “Malay unity” as the basis of national political life.

The big question facing Umno, and the country as a whole, is whether and when Umno will prove itself brave and smart enough to decide upon and achieve this impending inner transformation.

PROF CLIVE KESSLER, University of New South Wales, Sydney

Source: NST – May 29, 2008