“Has UMNO gone from a party of independence fighters to a party of kleptocrats?”

[superadmin]

AN UMNO-watcher observed: “In the early days of UMNO, it would be difficult to find a millionaire among UMNO division leaders. After over six decades of Independence, it would be difficult to find an UMNO division leader who is not a millionaire.”

Fifth UMNO president Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad believed that UMNO is beyond redemption. He said UMNO is totally corrupt and the conviction and sentence of Datuk Seri Najib Razak for embezzling public funds in the mega 1MDB scandal isn’t likely to cleanse the party.

Is the fifth UMNO President right that UMNO is beyond saving and that the only way to end the corruption perpetrated by UMNO leaders is to kill UMNO off entirely?

The 15th General Election (GE15) will decide whether UMNO can cease to be a party of kleptocrats and whether Malaysia will continue in the trajectory of a kleptocracy.

Up to now, neither UMNO nor any major UMNO leader has ever condemned the 1MDB financial scandal or the string of mega scandals that plague the country.

UMNO has so changed in character that the first four UMNO presidents – Onn Jaafar, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Abdul Razak Hussein and Tun Hussein Onn – will not be able to recognise or endorse it if they are alive today.

In 1979, at the UMNO General Assembly, Hussein Onn warned that Malaysia will be destroyed if its leaders are “dishonest, untrustworthy and corrupt” and expressed the hope that the Bank Rakyat scandal would be a “bitter lesson to other government institutions and agencies including companies and subsidiaries set up by the Government”.

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