Kejatuhan UMNO dalam Pilihan Raya Umum Ke-14: Analisis Pengajaran Politik (The Fall of Umno In The 14th General Election: An Analysis of Political Learning)

Abstract

UMNO, one of the longest standing dominant-party regimes in the world, was brought to its knees in the historic Malaysian 14th General Election (GE14). This article analyses the chronology that led UMNO to its defeat in the context of political learning. It argues that each cause presented as contributing factor to its fall in GE14 have already been repeatedly mentioned since 1999. As a long-surviving dominant party, UMNO had the opportunity to learn from numerous defeats of other dominant parties. One of the closest examples, which struck a chord with UMNO, was the defeat of the prominent conservative party in Japan, LDP, in 2009. While UMNO itself acknowledged the causal effects that led to the ousting of regimes similar to itself, UMNO remained oblivious in its domestic approach by narrowly adopting and applying these lessons only for the purpose of public consumption, instead of for its own internal reform. The gap between actual and artificial lessons in UMNO’s method of political learning arguably became a factor in its unexpected defeat in GE14.