Kadir: Good in having Azmin as opposition leader

Kadir Jasin says he'll attract more of the younger generation to Pakatan.

PETALING JAYA: Pakatan Rakyat could add to its youthful image by choosing Azmin Ali as the Parliamentary Opposition leader, veteran journalist A Kadir Jasin says in his latest blog posting.

He acknowledges that the position need not be given to a PKR leader, but says the party should be given the first right of refusal as Pakatan’s show of solidarity with Anwar Ibrahim.

He says the question of Anwar’s replacement is an important one if Pakatan wants to use the issue of his imprisonment as a new catalyst to quicken its march to Putrajaya.

The choice of Azmin, he adds, would bring more youthfulness to the Pakatan leadership and be an added encouragement to the younger generation to support the opposition coalition.

“The decision has to be made soon because the Dewan Rakyat’s first meeting this year will begin on March 9,” he says.

Kadir, who is a close associate of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, devoted much of the rest of his article to the questions of Barisan Nasional’s weakness and Umno’s “sickness”.

He says there’s no denying that Barisan Nasional is under serious threat of defeat at the next general election and the fallout from the imprisonment of Anwar Ibrahim could make matters worse.

“It’s not as if Umno is not aware of its current condition,” he writes. “I’m certain that Umno knows the sickness it’s suffering from.” He says Umno is aging and needs a “radical stem cell treatment” to arrest the process.

He claims that Umno’s top leaders are aware of the situation but “either do not know the treatment required or are afraid of using it”.

Followers of his blog are likely to guess that Kadir is referring to the need to remove Najib Abdul Razak from the Umno presidency and the Prime Minister’s office.

Referring to “plenty of studies and dry runs”, he says it’s possible that the next general election will see Umno unable to hold on to the 88 parliament seats it won in the 2013 election.

“There’s anxiety that the number of Umno seats would be reduced to 70 or even 60,” he adds.

He says with MCA being rejected by the Chinese, MIC in crisis and most of the other BN parties being inconsequential, the ruling coalition can realistically depend only on Umno and a few ethnic parties in Sarawak.

“The stengthening of BN must therefore begin with Umno,” he says. “BN cannot be strenghtened to face the Pakatan threat or be transformed to make it more contemporary to attract the younger generation’s support if Umno does not free itself from a stifling, feudalistic and dynastic hierarchy.”