UMNO reaches out to young women

UMNO reaches out to young women

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters): Malaysia's dominant political party
has drafted in a "warrior princess" to spearhead its campaign to
reach out to young women and boost support among ethnic Malays.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed's United Malays National
Organization (UMNO) has named Azalina Othman Said, a lawyer and
woman's rights advocate with a black belt in tae-kwon-do, to lead
the charge.

Mahathir, whose party recently amended its constitution to
create "Puteri UMNO", a new wing for young women, has named
Azalina, 36, to UMNO's supreme council, or top body.

"This is a good start," said Azalina, a former television talk
show host, whose credentials have impressed a local magazine
enough to christen her a 'warrior princess'.

"In a Malay environment where everybody's very conservative,
you allow an activist to come in and speak, and on top of that
you have a women's wing that is totally independent," Azalina
told Reuters in a recent interview.

She credits Mahathir with proposing Puteri and downplays her
own role. "I'm just doing my work," she said. "I'm an activist. I
go in to inform the supreme council members about women's issues,
issues pertaining to young people."

UMNO has been on the defensive since last November's general
elections, which it won with its customary two-thirds majority
but with dangerously slim margins in many places.

Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) walloped it in the northern
state of Terengganu, and took enough seats countrywide to become
the official opposition.

Events since show UMNO turning to the youth to counter the
growing strength of PAS and the challenge of Parti Keadilan
Nasional, led by the wife of jailed former finance minister Anwar
Ibrahim, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail.

Yet some are skeptical of UMNO's bid to win support.

Maznah Mohamad, professor of development studies at Universiti
Sains Malaysia in Penang, says the young women's wing is a bad
idea which even Azalina's energy and grassroots support cannot
rescue.

"UMNO is not really suffering from a weak organizational
structure," she said. "It suffers from a leadership renewal
problem and internal decay -- there's corruption, there's money
politics."

Malays, tired of those faults and deeply disturbed by the
arrest and trials of Anwar, now serving 15 years in prison, want
change, Maznah says.

That is driving many into the opposition.

"A lot of professionals have joined PAS," says Maznah. Other
Malays support only some PAS policies but believe it's "the most
useful, the most probable vehicle to achieve something and it has
such a fantastic (organizational) machinery."