KUALA LUMPUR: The Umno machinery should focus on improving its communication, particularly non-verbal communication, which is widely used on social media platforms.
Umno president Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said about 82% of voters prefer non-verbal communication as their medium, especially among the youth.
Ahmad Zahid said Umno relied on verbal communication, which represents only 18% of voters.
“The new generation of voters which are born from 2008 and above, as well as those who are below the age of 40, their mindset is different.
“This is the new reality that we have to face,” he said when launching the Digital Era in Politics Symposium 2026 held at the Umno General Assembly here, Wednesday (Jan 14).
Citing an example from the last US general election, Ahmad Zahid said the then-presidential candidate Donald Trump expressed a dislike for TikTok because voters were spreading hate against him on the platform.
“We have seen such a display of hatred by the US voters toward Trump. But no one could predict that Trump would win the election.
“Trump also promised that if he won the election, he would ban TikTok. Because the platform is new to the younger generation, it was not banned until today. This also meant that Trump’s victory was aided by the social media platforms,” he added.
Ahmad Zahid, who is also the Deputy Prime Minister, said that Umno has 21,000 information chiefs, 191 divisional information chiefs, and 14 state information chiefs, indicating the party has ample “assets” to deploy in the digital world.
He stressed that Umno should apply an offensive strategy to defend the party instead of being on the “defensive” side whenever an issue arises.
“It is because it has been a long time since we were on the ‘offensive’ side. When people ‘attack’ us, we do not defend ourselves, leaving us defenceless.
“Even though I am not active on social media, there is a team that helps me,” he added.
The party president also acknowledged that financial constraints are among the issues raised by the grassroots regarding the use of party machinery.
He said that the Umno days are not as “lavish” with allocation during the former president, Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
“During his time, Bossku (Najib) provided all of the machinery with an allocation of up to millions. We were lavish, but eventually we lost.
“Even though what we want to do requires money, it is not everything. If we have money but we do not apply the right methodology,” he added.
