— Jimmy Chua
The Malaysian Insider
Jan 08, 2013
JAN 8 — Really? On a day in which a good number of Malaysians were upset at the decree by the Selangor Sultan prohibiting non-Muslims from using the word “Allah”, the time warp Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) was engaging in nonsense.
Granted, the party is in a fight for its political life against DAP and can’t resist a point-scoring opportunity but surely, speaking up for non-Muslims is an important part of its remit. Surely, you show your relevance to Malaysians by speaking up on important issues.
No. It appears that the MCA of Chua Soi Lek and Liow Tiong Lai is incapable of anything substantial.
So, instead of making its position clear on the Sultan’s decree or at least adding some clarity to the issue, they chose to focus only on the DAP election fiasco.
And even then, they came out sounding incoherent. After chairing a party meeting, Chua said that DAP’s election snafu was a slap in the face of a party which talked about transparency, etc.
It is a fact that DAP didn’t cover itself with glory by fouling up a simple counting process which saw Zairil Khir Johari denied a place on the DAP leadership team.
DAP told the world about its mistake, reversed the mistake and one of the main figures in the fiasco resigned. The party can be accused of amateurish behaviour but surely coming clean, instead of hiding a mistake, is transparency.
In any case, DAP’s election mistake is not the most important news of the day. What has more impact on the lives of Christians and Sikhs is a ruling by the Selangor Sultan that the word “Allah” cannot be used by non-Muslims in the state.
Surely, the MCA has a view on this ruling. Or has it become a party which needs to sing the same tune of Umno or wait for the go-ahead from its Big Brother?