Umno will not place the young, highly-qualified ulama who joined the party recently in a special position, but wants them to be in stride with the other members in struggling for the party.
Its vice-president Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said their position would be the same like the rest of the members because in the party’s struggle, what was important was upholding the party’s values.
“It does not matter those who join Umno are ulama, teachers or students but they can struggle for the party together, guided by the party’s principles.
“We do not want to be seen as an extremist party, but our struggle for Islam should be acceptable to all,” he told reporters after
He believed the presence of the young group of ulama in Umno would help strengthen the party.
On Friday, 40 ulama with professional qualifications including at the Master’s and Phd levels, joined Umno to enhance Islamic missionary work in the party and country.
Asked on Umno’s current direction, Hishammuddin said the party was on the right track in the transformation process to be in tune with the changing political landscape.
In BESUT, Datuk Seri Abdullah Md Zin, religious advisor to the prime minister, said the 40 young ulama joining Umno showed increasing support from religious groups for the country’s moderate Islamic leadership, including in solving problems related to Islam.
“This is a good development for Umno which has for long been accused of being unIslamic by PAS,” he said when asked to comment on the latest development.
Abdullah said Umno would continue to struggle for justice and would always open its doors to ulama who believed in the party’s struggle.
Meanwhile, in REMBAU, Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin said the latest development was a slap in the face for PAS which thought it was the chosen party of the ulama.
He said with the involving of the 40 professionally qualified ulama in Umno, more spiritual programmes could be organised, especially in areas where political issues were always linked to religion.
Khairy who is also Rembau MP and division Youth head, was met by reporters after the simultaneous opening of the Rembau division’s Wanita, Youth and Puteri delegates’ meetings at the Pedas Industrial Training Institute by Negeri Sembilan Menteri Besar Datuk Mohamad Hasan today. — Bernama
Power is the glue of politics. That is why a government is expected to be in array and opposition generally in disarray. Ideology is a fickle custodian of unity in an age of convenience. Its absence has eliminated the difference between single-party rule and coalition government. Both are held together by individual or sectarian self-interest, which is why they last. Ideology is a differentiator; it makes a partnership untenable even if the partners consider it sustainable. Sentiment is irrelevant to any political marriage. This is true of all democracies where coalitions become necessary. Politicians live for power; why would they invite a premature death?
Indian politics, reduced to minimalist, notional ideology, devoid of individual or party accountability, is peculiarly suited to coalitions. If there were accountability, the DMK's A Raja would not remain in Manmohan Singh's Cabinet. Because there is none, the current coalition will survive without either condemnation or confession. An occasional spot of PR-driven tinkering is all that is needed.
Sometimes alliance parties find it convenient to simulate conflict, but this is public posturing to satisfy populist opinion before an election. Bengal and Bihar are the new templates of posture-politics.
Mamata Banerjee would, ideally, like to marginalize Congress and usurp the Congress vote. But as long as Congress has some vote she cannot afford to destroy the alliance. There will be variations in the mathematics of the equation, which is perfectly reasonable, since even a municipal election jerks the kaleidoscope to induce new patterns. The entrails of Bengal's May municipal results must have been fully read by now, but a glaring fact was obvious very early: the Left Front did far better against Congress than against Trinamool. Mamata will consequently squabble for additional space, but she has not lost her political marbles. She knows the tensile strength of her alliance with Congress and will not stretch it to breaking point. Nor does Congress care if her nickname in Delhi has become Derailways Minister. The game is political. A new game may or may not begin after the Bengal Assembly elections next year.
In Bihar, Nitish Kumar and the BJP are equipped with multi-megabyte calculators, which work on long-lasting batteries powered by mutually-beneficial ground reality. The photograph of a Nitish-Narendra Modi armshake was not exactly news to the Bihar voter. It made the front page much before the last general election. A substantial number of Muslims voted for Nitish Kumar in 2009 despite that photo because they wanted to thank him for keeping the peace as well as giving them jobs. They knew they were voting for the NDA. Since then, however, there has been some slippage in minority support for Nitish. Nitish's political gasp at the reappearance of the photo was an attempt to buy a few brownie points at easy rates, a familiar tactic of electoral politics. Similarly, the BJP's gruff huff and puff was intended to energize its own core vote. Neither party will win in Bihar if they split their support, and their leaders have tasted the comforts of office.
The real conflicts in the UPA2 era are not inter-party but intra-party. The BJP has done signal service to news media over the past year, feeding it with a constant supply of stories about personal bickering such as the one over Jaswant Singh's Jinnah book. The author-MP's return to the party marks a partial restoration of sense but much more reparation is needed on the long road ahead to credibility. Congress, as the main ruling party, should have been happily becalmed.
But it has been restive, pushing unpopular policy decisions such as deregulation of petrol prices while its spokespersons shoot themselves in both feet with gold-medal accuracy. For the first time in years they seem to be happier abroad than in domestic TV studios. Congress is complacent because it believes that it has time to recover before the 2014 general election. The states have dropped off the radar because most of them are in a mess.
Congress is suffering from insurrection in Andhra Pradesh, abdication in Karnataka, uncertainty in Maharashtra, indifference in central India, bondage in Bengal, futility in Bihar and drift in Punjab. Its spirits are concentrated around a single hope, that Rahul Gandhi will engineer a miraculous rebirth by offering himself as candidate for UP chief minister in a diamond-versus-dimple election.
Regional parties need their share of headlines and so Mulayam Singh Yadav discovers ways in which to expel Amar Singh, while no soap opera could ever have the courage to script any serial akin to the inheritance wars of the DMK. It is perfectly logical that a feudal culture should breed feuds. There is calm in the one-woman party because its leaders cannot expel themselves. The glue of power melts only in the heat of public anger. Corruption, prices and Bhopal have induced a simmer, but it will need more heat to reach boiling point
Khairy had called Ibrahim “jaguh kampung” after
Wee had last week told a media conference that the government should not phase out Public Service Department (PSD) scholarships, saying that the status quo should remain for both the PSD and Mara scholarships.
He had said that this was because the PSD was the only avenue for non-Bumiputera top scorers to go overseas while Mara was for the Bumiputeras.
Ibrahim, however, subsequently accused Wee of being “insolent” and claimed he had challenged Malay rights when he questioned if Mara scholarships should be abolished together with the PSD’s.
“I am proud to be called jaguh kampung... At least I’m close to the people, meaning I’m the real deal.
“Because of that I can appreciate my forefathers’ fight and care so much for my race and understand history,” Ibrahim said in response to Khairy’s statement yesterday that he (Ibrahim) was like a “jaguh kampung” for demanding that the Rembau MP step down.
“I am a jaguh kampung who is brave like a bull... Anything that crosses my path, I will fight it to the end,” said the independent MP for Pasir Mas.
Ibrahim claimed that Malays could only look to Mara to help raise their standard of living.
“Village folk can only place hope in Mara... That’s why I am proud to be called a jaguh kampung,” he said.
Yesterday, Khairy likened Ibrahim to a “village champion politician” who had no right to demand that he, the Rembau MP, quit his post for defending Wee.
Khairy, who is also Barisan Nasional (BN) Youth chief, said Ibrahim was not qualified to call for his resignation as he was not a voter in the Rembau constituency or even an Umno member.
Ibrahim had said that Khairy should step down as MP for “sacrificing his race’s dignity” to defend the MCA Youth chief for allegedly questioning the granting of scholarships to Malays through Mara.
Perkasa secretary-general Syed Hassan Syed Ali defended Ibrahim, saying the Perkasa president was a village champion who was not only respected locally but known internationally as well.
“As a jaguh kampung, he is not only at the forefront of championing domestic issues but international ones, such as when he wrote a letter to Pope Benedict on the ‘Allah’ issue and when Australian MPs tried to interfere in Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s sodomy case,” he said.
“We are not disappointed with Khairy’s statement. In fact, we are proud of what Ibrahim has done to further Malay issues.
“More and more Malays, particularly Umno members, are joining Perkasa because of people like Khairy who give the impression that Umno no longer fights for Malay rights,” he said.
Syed Hassan added that Perkasa will launch its Rembau branch next month.
No comments:
Post a Comment