In an interview with FMT, Khaled said Umno must do away with the politics of patronage.
He said people should not look at Umno as a means to achieve position or to make money, and that this culture needed to be overcome in ensuring the party picked the right leaders for the challengers of the new political landscape.
“After many years of being the party that formed the government, we see the need for Umno to return to certain values,” said Khaled, who will be contesting the Umno vice-president’s post in the party elections on June 30.
“We can see that Umno has compromised a lot (in terms of its values), on issues of corruption, non-performance, not being frank enough, not being able to tell the leadership the truth, not being able to give service to the people.
“We need to bring back these values.”
Khaled said changes were also needed in the way Umno was organised and run. The party must be run professionally, to better attract professionals and younger people.
“The structure must be changed so it doesn’t create a situation where Umno is seen to have a culture of patronage, devoid of values.”
Umno had so many branches and members that the party often seemed to exist to “take care” of its members, rather than the people at large.
“During elections, for instance, we have to make sure that the branches and their leaders are treated the right way or else they may sulk, so then, you focus your time on them and not the people.”
Khaled said Umno members must face the reality that Malaysia had changed politically.
“Some parties don’t have so many members but they have support. What is it that binds them? It is issues which are more popular among the people – like the standard of living – so the parties that talk about these will capture the interest of the public.
“If you only talk about nationalism, it’s only relevant when being colonised. We can’t talk about past glory, because now, people need to eat food and have a good standard of living.”
Umno which had been too dependent on the government, must realise it was a separate organisation from the government.
There were things the government should do and there were things Umno should do, such as providing input to the government, and not the other way around.
Despite the need for such changes, Khaled does not believe Umno as an organisation has lost relevance despite its losses in the May 9 general election.
A number of factors caused Umno’s defeat, such as public perception about former prime minister Najib Razak and the inability of Umno and Barisan Nasional to counter the opposition’s accusations against Najib.
Other factors included what he termed as Pakatan Harapan’s populist policies, as well as their “lies” in blaming everything on the government, from higher oil prices to the increase in cost of living.
“Also the belief that the government was using all its might to have an unfair election like the show cause letter to PPBM (from the Registrar of Societies), the redelineation exercise (of many urban constituencies by the Election Commission) and the weekday polling all contributed to a feeling of unhappiness.”