Umno will \u201cdie of old age\u201d unless the party rejuvenates itself by voting in more younger leaders, said former party president Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.<\/p>\n
Dr Mahathir said delegates to the party\u2019s coming elections next month should ensure that the top positions, especially at the supreme council, which is Umno\u2019s highest decision-making body, are filled with an adequate number of young leaders.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly if Umno is rejuvenated by younger leaders can it continue to carry on its struggles entrusted to it by the Malays,\u201d wrote the former prime minister in a hard-hitting commentary in Utusan Malaysia yesterday.<\/p>\n
He said many Umno founders were in their 30s when they started the struggle and they managed to deny the British their Malayan Union and helped gain independence for the country as they had big dreams for the Malay community.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut they and their successors are now old. They are past their time. Their contributions have become less and less,\u201d wrote Dr Mahathir.<\/p>\n
He said it was important for older leaders to realise that they should not stay longer than necessary as people would become fed up with those \u201cwho are out of date but who still cannot accept the truth\u201d.<\/p>\n
Dr Mahathir also said that some leaders who had overstayed were willing to do anything to remain in power, including bribing voting delegates at the party elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany are easily swayed by bribes. Not much. Even RM200 can affect the thinking of some party members.\u201d<\/p>\n
Urging for an end to money politics, Dr Mahathir reminded party members that if they chose corrupt leaders, these leaders would not hesitate to sell out the Malays.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe must accept that Umno today is no longer trusted by many Malays. That is why they are setting up non-governmental organisations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they had many choices, Umno would have lost in the 13th general election,\u201d wrote Dr Mahathir.<\/p>\n
He reminded party members and leaders not to hold on to the mistaken belief that Umno would continue to win in general elections regardless of what the party did because there was no other choice – TheStarOnline<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Umno will \u201cdie of old age\u201d unless the party rejuvenates itself by voting in more younger leaders, said former party president Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Dr Mahathir said delegates to the party\u2019s coming elections next month should ensure that the top positions, especially at the supreme council, which is Umno\u2019s highest decision-making body, are filled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14983,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"better_featured_image":{"id":14983,"alt_text":"","caption":"","description":"","media_type":"image","media_details":{"width":544,"height":356,"file":"2013\/09\/Tun-Mahathir.jpg","filesize":81712,"sizes":{},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1","keywords":[]}},"post":14982,"source_url":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Tun-Mahathir.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14982"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}