UMNO fights and befriends rivals, highlighting ‘absurdity of politics’

Firing salvos while pursuing pacts, the party navigates a path of contradictions

- Lu Wei Hoong Malaysia Correspondent and Muzliza Mustafa Malaysia Correspondent

(ZAHID HAMIDI/FACEBOOK)

For decades, UMNO presidents have walked past a mural at the World Trade Centre depicting the rival Democratic Action Party’s (DAP) rocket logo piercing constitutional articles protecting Malay special rights - a symbol of political enmity.

What the party had not envisaged was governing alongside DAP at the federal and state levels, only to oppose it later in Sabah’s state election.

“Isn't this a kepelikan politik?” UMNO president Zahid Hamidi said in his keynote speech at UM-NO’s general assembly on Jan 16, using a Malay term he coined roughly meaning “the absurdity of politics”.

“Even if political cooperation exists between parties taking different paths, collaboration at the federal level may not be reflected at the state, as politics today is full of contradictions.”

His declaration highlighted UMNO’s contradictory navigation: allowing its grassroots to fire salvos against DAP while governing together federally; rejecting a formal alliance with Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) while pursuing Muslim unity pacts.

The “absurdities” defined UMNO’s 79th anniversary assembly, where around 3,000 delegates gathered to chart an electoral strategy that must simultaneously satisfy its Malay-Muslim base and maintain federal coalition stability - all while preparing to contest solo in the 16th general election due by February 2028.

Since at least 2018, Datuk Seri Zahid has used the allegory of “the tiger and the sheep” to describe his internal and external persona: Even when he is fierce at heart like a tiger, what comes out must appear docile as a sheep.

As UMNO leaders and grassroots unleashed salvos against DAP leaders who celebrated former prime minister Najib Razak’s failure to secure home detention in December 2025, Mr Zahid urged composure and even rejected calls for UMNO to leave the government.