Write: Yan Yan
Oriental Daily, Dec 3, 2014

The Umno general assembly is now over. Najib is the man to watch. From his advice and criticism, his changed attitude and his speech, one can sense his stand, his situation and his strategy for the future.

One can remember on the eve of the Umno assembly, Defence Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin said this assembly would be different from the past in that all delegates would be allowed to speak freely. DPM Muhyiddin also said delegates could speak freely.
However, as the assembly drew near, Wanita, Youth and Umno Puteri leaders cautioned against making racist remarks. They could talk about Malay issues but not Chinese and Indian issues.

On the eve of the assembly, Najib in an interview with the media, made his stand clear. “We should not say we need Chinese votes on one hand and on the other hand, we want to close Chinese primary schools,” he said, adding that he personally felt that there had been too much racial remarks. There is need to stop such racial and extremist talks from spreading.

And when foreign diplomat asked what was the secret of Malaysia’s success, his answer was unity. Whether Najib spoke from his heart or was just making an official statement, his words and action before and during the Umno general assembly had indeed shown his desire to defuse the racial conflicts and curb the extreme voices.

What is Najib’s real intention then? Is he eyeing the 52 percent votes in support of Pakatan? Some analysts think that Najib wants to make a change. His strategy for the future is to talk about racial harmony to win votes instead of creating racial issues to gain support.

In other words, since there was no party election this year, the pressure from the 47 percent voters and party grass-roots was not as great and he could afford to make a start from the general assembly this year to inculcate ideas about racial harmony among Umno delegates.

He was hoping that after working on the idea of racial harmony for three years, he could reap the support of the Malay, Chinese and Indian voters at the 14th general election.

Even though there is a change of attitude at the just ended 2014 Umno assembly, it does not mean that Najib did not care about the feeling of the 47 percent Umno supporters. In fact, he cared more for them than the 52 percent Pakatan supporters. The Sedition Act, for example, was to meet the desire of the 47 percent supporters and garner their support.

Najib may be thinking that he would need to strengthen the support of the 47 percent supporters first and then work to consolidate racial harmony to achieve his objective in three years.

Therefore, in his keynote speech he called out “Hidup Melayu!” but ended his speech by shouting “Maju Bumiputra，Maju UMNO，Maju BN，Maju Malaysia!”

Original Source: 纳吉开始耕耘族群和谐？