“They must have unquestionable integrity, or else it will be as before. Umno fell because we had leaders who were difficult to defend. So choose leaders whose integrity cannot be questioned.”
Leaders who are competent should be chosen, not the many “actors” and “jokers”, he said in an interview with FMT.
The third quality, he said, was that of humility. Leaders must be humble. “Sometimes, people hate Umno because there are leaders who are arrogant when they become ministers and it becomes hard to meet them and they don’t look after their own constituency.
“Their constituencies may be on the east coast or the northern region, but they live in Kuala Lumpur, so when do they serve their constituency? Once a week? It’s not enough.”
Mohamad, former menteri besar of Negeri Sembilan, is one of three candidates seeking to be Umno’s deputy president at the party elections on June 30.
He sees a “silver lining” in Umno’s loss in the 14th general election in that the party is being forced to return to its roots and rebuild from the ground up.
Umno at its core was still “a good product”, although in dire need of new packaging. “The problem with the packaging now is that it is equated with corruption and cronyism. That’s why we need to reorganise and repackage it so people can see that Umno has really changed.”
He characterised the party as being similar to a tree, where the flourishing of its leaves are only made possible from strong and healthy roots. Umno must look after its grassroots members so that the tree is not eaten away by parasites.
“The roots must be strong, not the leaves. We were proud, our headquarters at the Putra World Trade Center is big, so our leaves looked impressive but our roots were rotten.”
He said Umno must now go back to its origins when the party was formed in 1946 to serve and defend the Malays. “But in doing so, we do not sideline anyone, because Umno within the Barisan Nasional framework, together with other component parties, must look into the interests of all Malaysians.”
A positive result of Umno’s loss of power was that people would no longer see the party as a place to gain wealth and rewards.
“When we’re no longer the government, many abandoned ship. When a ship sinks, a lot of rats will jump out. It’s good, self-cleansing,” he said.
He hoped those who stayed true to Umno would focus on how the party could bounce back instead of pointing fingers over how the party fell.
The priority was for Umno to resurface from its sinking state by choosing a new leader. “Once we have a new leader, we need to find the nearest shore and swim towards it. Only then can we think about the future.”
For the coming party elections on June 30, he cautioned against unhealthy smear campaigning akin to the 1987 Umno polls, which led to a split in the party. Campaigns based on smearing, he said, would give the impression that Umno had not changed, and would drive people away.
Besides Mohamad, two others are in the running for the deputy president’s post: former minister Annuar Musa, who is Umno information chief and MP for Ketereh, and a little-known Pekan Umno member, Mohd Afnalizam Mohd Salim.
The full list of candidates has yet to be released by Umno headquarters, pending background checks on all the candidates. Nominations for the elections closed on Sunday.