MUBARAK & Veteran UMNO at the state level.

20.7.2009.

Considering that the first local elections were 58 years ago, and UMNO is 63 years old, the ages of MUBARAK and Veteran UMNO as ngo's are surprisingly youthful. MUBARAK is less than 8 years old, and Veteran UMNO even younger. To-day both organizations are stronger at the Federal level than the state level. It seems that only the incumbent Federal UMNO Ministers recognize the importance of these ngo's politically to the BN's and UMNO's cause. Only Federal financial contributions allow these ngo's to function at all.

MUBARAK Negeri Sembilan has less than 30 active members, and Veteran UMNO Negeri Sembilan has even less. Commesurate with this status, the State UMNO Leadership gives scant recognition and even less financial assistance to both. True, in what little speeches are thrown at their scanty congregations attended by State leaders they have praised these organization more than enough. In reality the effective support has been relatively puny, and few and far between.

The last State Annual Meetings for both examplified the poverty of members and numbers of these two organization. To add insult to injury, at MUBARAK's last AGM, on spotting some money that has been stingily spent to leave the account soluble, the MB even commented " since MUBARAK N.S. has some funds, I'm not giving anything this year". 

Federal UMNO leaders have echoed MUBARAK's and UMNO Veteran's calls for recognition and support for their loyalty and service to Party and country. This support seems natural and sounds good to the ordinary BN and UMNO members nation-wide. What else can be said, anyway. But real support in the form of physical recognition such as money, office accomodation, ceremonial invitation, honour awards, and even free parking as in Melaka, at state level, is patchy and irregular. Nothing can be done without funding and the members, by defination, cannot support themselves.

In the case of Veteran UMNO perhaps UMNO is scared of the potential numbers. But in the case of MUBARAK, how many of them are there if still alive and kicking ?. In the last Veteran UMNO Committee meeting it was suggested that it starts making some noise in the media. Perhaps then the incumbent UMNO leaders will give it some attention. If this happens, then it's the same Malaysian malaise - if the noise you make can cause problems for incumbent party leaders, then they'll try to pacify you. There's no genuine interest in giving real support to real causes. Malaysia bolih ? Mana bolih ! 

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