An Open Letter to Akmal Saleh

From FB page of:

Betty Teh

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An Open Letter to Akmal Saleh

YB Dr Akmal,

I am writing this not as an opponent, nor as an enemy of Malays or UMNO Youth, but as a Malaysian who believes that leadership especially youth leadership carries responsibility beyond noise, provocation, or inherited rage.

Your recent rhetoric and actions have raised an important question, not just about politics, but about how UMNO Youth was raised to understand power, privilege, and accountability.

There is a layer to UMNO Youth’s agitation today that is rarely acknowledged, but crucial to understanding its tone: entitlement has been normalised as identity.

For decades, UMNO Youth was politically socialised in an environment where power was inherited, not earned. You and those before you were raised within a system that taught subtly, often not, but definitely consistently, and institutionally that political dominance was permanent, privilege was natural, and concession was betrayal. Victory was assumed. Authority was unquestioned. Accountability was optional.

In such a culture, wrongdoing does not feel like transgression.

It feels like prerogative.

This is why UMNO Youth so often reacts to accountability with outrage rather than reflection. Court verdicts are framed as persecution. Criticism is dismissed as hostility. The loss of power is interpreted not as consequence, but as injustice. When one is taught that privilege is forever, the rule of law inevitably feels like an intrusion.

What emerges is a deeply corrosive mindset: the belief that being wronged is a right, that bending rules is justified, and that moral standards are negotiable when they apply to “us.” This is not youthful arrogance. It is learned behaviour passed down through decades of unchecked dominance.

And when that entitlement collides with reality for example electoral defeat, coalition subordination, judicial accountability, the result is not adaptation, but anger.

That anger is visible today. It is possibly going to be visible tomorrow and palpable the day after. When will it stop?

It manifests as racial posturing, emotional escalation, and a return to language Malaysians have grown weary of. It is not strength. It is disorientation. UMNO Youth is not merely defending a party or a former leader it is defending a worldview in which power was guaranteed and consequences were theoretical.

But YB, politics has changed.

Malaysia has changed.

The electorate you claim to represent no longer responds to intimidation, racial mobilisation, or grievance politics. Young Malays today may not want inherited privilege they may want earned dignity. They may not fear meritocracy they possibly fear being trapped by low expectations masquerading as protection.

And this is where leadership matters.

You can choose to continue shouting at a Malaysia that is moving on. Or you can choose to prepare UMNO Youth for a reality where power must be earned anew, where accountability is not persecution, and where moral courage matters more than volume.

Entitlement, once institutionalised, now reads as insecurity.

Noise, once effective, now sounds hollow.

Until UMNO Youth confronts the uncomfortable truth that privilege is not a birthright, the shouting will continue louder, sharper, and increasingly disconnected from the electorate it claims to represent.

The question is whether you want to be remembered as the custodian of that noise or the leader who had the courage to end it.

Malaysia does not need louder youth leaders.

It needs braver ones.

Respectfully,

Betty Teh

A Malaysian who believes our future deserves better than inherited anger