Ummm, yes it's UMNO again

Malaysia's prime minister is not short on names: Dato' Sri Haji Mohammad Najib bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak. That's a tad more than the poncy record British multi-barrelled surname of Francis Edward Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce, 8th Baron Thurlow, who died recently . But let's just call him Najib Tun Razak for short. He's pretty well connected for a Malaysian politician: father Tun Abdul Razak was the country's second prime minister, while uncle Tun Hussein Onn was the third. He was elected president of UMNO, the United Malays National Organisation in 2009. UMNO has been the party in power in Malaysia since independence in 1959, a run of 54 years and was once again victorious in the latest poll which saw record numbers of voters turn out. It wasn't plain sailing for the world's longest-ruling party (following the demise of the Colorado Party in Paraguay a few years ago) as it slipped further in the poll but still ended up with a comfortable parliamentary majority. Allegations of electoral fraud are unlikely to bear much fruit. Malaysia's policy of favouring ethnic Malays over Chinese has caused a steady erosion of support for UMNO and its coalition partners in recent years. Even so Malaysia remains a remarkable economy. Over the past forty years it has transformed itself from an exporter of commodities like palm oil, rubber and tin to one of the largest shippers of semiconductor devices, electrical goods and appliances in the world. Inflation is under 2% and GDP growth tracks along steadily at 5% plus. Years ago when I was listening to a lot of Indonesian radio stations I had it in mind to try to learn Bahasa Indonesia, a delightful language. I then discovered that there are similarities between Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia. To locals there are many differences for sure but to the untuned ear they sound mutually intelligible. The QSL is a beautiful card from Radio Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, heard on 60mb in Cape Town in 1968. The little blurb on the card states that chief exports are rubber and tin. Boy did that change!