PETALING JAYA: Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin has reminded members of the movement to approach the people in a sincere manner and not doing so in order to ‘enter the frame’ and get attention.
He said sincerity was important and that leaders would know those who had done their job even without them projecting themselves as such.
“We should show that Umno is always close to the people. That is why I’ve reminded the Youth movement that if I come to a gotong-royong, there is no need for a large group of people to throng around (me) … it shows as if we just want to be ‘in the frame.’ The Youth movement should cast away this ‘entering the frame’ culture.
“I will know those who have been working,” he told reporters after attending a gotong-royong organised by the Kelana Jaya Umno Youth at Taman Desa Ria.
He said such a culture should be avoided because it was not in line with the reminder given by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak who want leaders and officers to focus on helping the people and not on seeking popularity.
Khairy, who is the Barisan Nasional (BN) Youth chairman, also said that the movement had started to organise more people-oriented programmes and less party-oriented ones.
He said programmes like the ‘Jelajah One Malaysia’, which involved community programmes such as helping the people repair their homes, would be held nationwide and had targeted at least a thousand homes.
“This will go on until the general election because this is more effective than conducting ceramah,” he said, adding that the movement also targeted to register 150,000 members as voters this year.
He added that the main challenge for the initiative would be to trace the whereabouts of members who had moved into cities and towns.
Meanwhile, Khairy reminded BN component parties, especially the MCA, MIC and PPP to carry out their own membership drives and not just depending on Umno.
“This is not to criticise anyone; just a gentle reminder,” he said, adding that it was important to register new members because the opposition parties such as the DAP had been aggressively registering new members, especially from the Chinese community.
He said that so far, the DAP had registered 55,000 members compared to Umno’s 53,000 and if the figure was added to the registration by PAS, the number of new opposition members could reach 100,000.
“That is why we need other component parties to target voters from their communities, or else we could only register members and voters from the Malay community,” he said.— Bernama