By Lim Sue Goan, Sin Chew Daily

PKR, Umno and Amanah have held their conventions / general assemblies recently. While their leaders have made countless of remarks, few are of any value at all.

While it appeared that PKR president Anwar Ibrahim and his deputy Azmin Ali had achieved some sort of reconciliation on the eve of the party's national convention, physical clashes took place outside the Youth convention venue, followed by Azmin and his supporters leaving en masse in protest and holding a "SPV 2030 dinner" in a blatant show of force.

There were indeed some notable points in Anwar's address. For example, he said Pakatan Harapan would not be in power for too long if the government continued to look for excuses for not implementing the promised reforms. He also urged party leaders and members to perpetuate the 1998 Permatang Pauh declaration to defend the right of Malaysians of all ethnic origins, while advising Muslims to make an effort to understand other religions and cultures, including Confucianism. Unfortunately, the focus of his policy speech had been obscured by his mention of Melaka sultanate traitors.

At the PKR convention held in Melaka, the party president made mention of two Melaka sultanate traitors, Si Kitol and Raja Mendeliar, in an apparent attempt to hint at Azmin Ali as a traitor who was set to destroy the party. After that, delegates participating in the debates began to hit out at Azmin, whom they claimed must be expelled.

Meanwhile, Azmin slammed party delegates during the SPV 2030 dinner that they did not talk about national economy, shared prosperity policy, housing policy or issues related to young people, and said he felt ashamed that the party central committee had elected such low quality debaters.

The thing is, has the economic affairs minister ever come up with any economic stimulus package or contemplate how to create economic prosperity in the first place? His ministry has hardly done anything for the country's economy!

As leaders of the party with the largest number of seats in the Parliament, both Anwar and Azmin have badly failed the voters' mandate. Indeed, the party should be ashamed of itself for being incapable of leading the new government and embroiled in unending internal conflicts.

In the meantime, the Umno general assembly this year proves once again that it is naive for anyone to believe that the party will change after it has lost the general elections. The party remains very much racist in nature despite having made some kind gestures aimed at pleasing non-Malays in return for their overwhelming support in the recent Tanjung Piai by-election.

This year's Umno general assembly adopted a constitutional amendment to include the word "Islam" on top of the original article to uphold the dignity and stature of race and country. This shows that the party is leaning towards PAS in deepening its religious undertone so that from this moment it is no longer just racist but religious, too.

Nik Mohamad Abduh, son of the late PAS spiritual leader Nik Abdul Aziz, praised Umno for the constitutional amendment to incorporate the word "Islam", arguing that his father once set the precondition that Umno must incorporate Islam in its constitution before the two parties could work together.

By incorporating Islam in its party constitution, Umno will gain the trust of PAS grassroots and supporters and will win the hearts of rural Muslim voters. Nevertheless, this also means that the country's policies will be further Islamised if the Umno-PAS alliance happens to win the next general elections, dealing a fatal blow on the integrity of our multicultural society.

As if that is not enough, Umno delegates also accused DAP of bringing in thousands of “phantom voters” from China every month and issuing "blue ICs" to them. They argued that part of the RM200,000 allocations for 60 Chinese schools in the country under Budget 2020 had been siphoned to Chinese NGOs outside the knowledge of the education minister, while claiming communism had made its way into some of our political parties and government agencies.

Umno has been exploiting the issues of Chin Peng's ashes, misplacement of the national flag, Mandarin version of Negaraku, 30th anniversary of Hat Yai Peace Agreement and allocations for Chinese schools, with the motive of demonising DAP and accusing it of controlling the PH government in an attempt to fan racial emotions and anxiety among the Malays who would then rally behind Umno-PAS.

Ironically, the Year 5 history textbooks for Chinese and Tamil primary schools published by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka in 2014 have the national anthem translated into Chinese and Tamil. So, what is Najib challenging about since this was done during the previous BN administration?

Now that PPBM Youth has filed a police report, do our politicians still have time to fix our ailing economy and address the problems of the people, if they are so engrossed with this issue?

As for Amanah, there wasn't anything exciting in its recent national convention save for its first ever party elections since inception four years ago, which saw majority of incumbent party leaders returned.

The Chinese word of the year for 2019 is "cheat", which aptly reflects the feelings of ordinary Malaysians. Indeed, politicians on both sides of the divide are cheating the people, but sadly there are still many who would believe and follow them. This country will not have a future with this kind of leaders and followers!