I don’t know if Umno is capable of reforming itself, says Ku Li

By admin-s On Dec 12, 2014

(TMI) – Tan Sri Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, Malaysia’s longest-serving Member of Parliament, is decidedly despondent about his country.

“I cannot recall an experience when Malaysia, after independence, was trapped in a situation similar to that we face now,” he said in a wide-ranging interview with The Edge Review.

Malaysia’s troubled political landscape, where the sensitive issues of race and religion are dominating headlines and public discourse, is being weighed down by the serious deterioration in the country’s economic performance where mounting debt in the public sector and households is leaving the country very vulnerable to external shocks.

“We have never been in this spot before,” says the urbane 77-year-old politician, who is fondly known as Ku Li.

Tengku Razaleigh, a prince from the northeastern Kelantan state, ought to know.

Since the mid-1960s, Tengku Razaleigh has played key roles in several of the country’s ambitious economic initiatives and held crucial ministerial positions to emerge as a strong contender for the premiership of Malaysia.

In 1965, he became the first executive director of state-owned Bank Bumiputra, which today, after several transformations, is the regional financial powerhouse CIMB Group.

In 1974, he was appointed as the chairman and chief executive of the newly minted national oil corporation Petroliam Nasional Bhd, or Petronas, a position that the premier at the time, Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, described as “equivalent of a Cabinet Minister”.

During this meteoric rise, Tengku Razaleigh was also making waves in the United Malays National Organisation (Umno) party that dominates the ruling National Front (Barisan Nasional) coalition government.

In 1971, he was elected to the powerful policy-making Umno Supreme Council and, two years later, to the prestigious position of party treasurer.

Cabinet appointments followed quickly. He was Finance Minister between 1976 and 1984, and Minister of International Trade and Industry from 1984 to 1987.

His departure from the government followed a bruising battle for the Umno presidency, and the Malaysian premiership that traditionally comes with it, with Tun (at the time Datuk Seri) Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Tengku Razaleigh narrowly lost and was dropped from government, together with his supporters.

Since then, he has been sidelined from mainstream politics within Umno and the government. But for many Malaysians, he remains a voice of reason.