At crossroads – MCA or Chinese community?

By Stanley Koh | February 17, 2012
Free Malaysia Today

Some equate truth and falsehood to water separating from oil. The Chinese proverb “shi zhen nan jia, shi jia nan zhen” means if it is the truth, it is impossible to falsify and likewise, equally difficult to make a truth out of falsehood.

This in mind, if MCA is at the crossroads, does it also mean that the Chinese community is facing the same predicament?

The symbolic relationship between MCA and the Chinese community is akin to fish to water and is destined to become irrelevant as more and more conscientious Chinese Malaysians abandon the party at the crossroads.

In the 2008 electoral tsunami, some 3.7 million Malaysians voted against the Barisan Nasional (BN) component parties of which the opposition DAP garnered more than one million votes against MCA’s 840,000 votes despite having a membership population of 1.3 million.

It was even more humiliating that DAP won many of the 25 parliamentary out of 40 seats contested by MCA.

“MCA never enjoyed the support of the Chinese-dominated constituencies in the past and this is not peculiar in the 12th general election,” outlined its 2008 general election’s confidential post-mortem report.

The report also outlined numerous major weaknesses of the party and blamed Umno for its poor electoral showing.

The party also admitted that its accusation of DAP being an apologist for PAS’s Islamic state was not effective because PAS remained silent.

“To worsen the 2008 electoral scenario, MCA was silent when former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad stated that Malaysia was an Islamic state,” the report added.

Umno to blame

In a candid admission of weaknesses, the party’s post-mortem report apportioned much of its blame to Umno for its arrogance, corruption and cronyism, excessive abuse of power, lack of transparency, interference in the judiciary, failure to control inflation and rising prices.

The rakyat’s repressed and postponed anger against the BN was clearly acted upon at the ballot boxes.

Despite the party’s great dissatisfaction against Umno-BN over its massive losses, the MCA leadership concluded that “at this point of time, the MCA’s leadership has made the decision to remain in the BN”.

Given this appalling background and the current prevailing political landscape, it is not surprising the predicament facing MCA since the 2008 electoral tsunami.

MCA has stayed on the crossroads.

Nothing much has changed despite multi-million ringgit sloganeering, repackaging and rhetoric on transformation.

Political mind-sets of the ruling regime and many decades-old issues confronting the various communities remain unchanged or outstanding like sore thumbs in a row.

“I don’t see any change in the political scenario of the country in 10 years’ time. Politics in the country would continue to be very racial, and race-based parties will continue to thrive in Malaysia,” Dr Chua Soi Lek had remarked in 2005.

His words displayed his short-sighted vision in response to a question asking him the directions of MCA in the years ahead.

Chua’s leadership in MCA will continue to compromise with trade-offs with Umno to get the crumbs and little benefits for the community in the long term, while he holds onto a thin thread to his party’s power throne.

Should Chua step down?

Chua has achieved little to prove to the Malaysian voters at large that the party is serious in political and institutional reforms.

It has been “business as usual” in his performance as party president, repeating the same mendacity and dirty tricks of his predecessors.

Accused of being a peddler of false hopes by his opponents within the party, Chua runs and controls the party machinery with no promises of real transformation.

“The only strategic move he has made was ‘money politics’ – distributing money to party veterans and spouses with new births,” claimed a party insider.

In which case should Chua step down to pave the way for a new collective leadership to lead the MCA towards the general election? Will this drastic move then improve the image or the chances of the party’s performance at the next general election?

Tragically, the chances of an improved perception from the Chinese community on the party’s image has been largely discouraging.

“Political image is like mixing cement. When it is wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there is almost nothing you can do to re-shape it.’

These words spoken by former American vice-president Mondale Walter best described the predicament facing Chua in removing the hardened negative perceptions from the general Malaysian public towards the 62-year-old party.

Politically reincarnated, Chua is no longer bothered with his personal image tarnished by his controversial sexual escapade in 2008.

He is also largely ignoring the tainted past of his party’s history ridden with a series of leadership power struggle since the early 70s.

Chua failed to lead

Rather than hobbling into the political sunset, Chua is engaging tactical gimmicks, strategic manoeuvres, offensive approach and even perverted logic in his public persuasion to re-capture public voting support.

Hence, not surprisingly, his latest orchestration of a “Chinese soap opera” in the form of a public debate on Feb 18 is seen as a final desperate move to confront DAP, its chief rival nemesis, following weeks of publicity attacks against PAS on the hudud issue.

After weeks of firing blank shots at PAS with the hidden agenda to undermine DAP’s partnership within Pakatan Rakyat, Chua harbours hopes of a divine wind to arrest the steep decline of his party’s unpopularity and boost greater confidence within the party.

With speculations of general election around the corner, the MCA leadership is frantically exerting efforts to reclaim legitimate representation of the Chinese community.

It is a season for theatrical politics. But there is a thin line between politics and theatrics.

“To do well in the next general election, we have to overcome the negative perception of the Chinese towards MCA,” Chua told delegates at the 57th party general assembly in 2010.

Chua promised to check policies against corruption and kickbacks. He pledged the party would not be a blind follower to BN’s unfair practices, wrong-doings and the NEP’s implementation weaknesses.

But the sad fact is that, Chua’s effort is hampered by his own current leadership behaviour characterised by his own party’s old politics of misrepresentation and distortion on issues of the day relating to human rights, electoral reforms, corruption and financial mismanagement of the nation’s resources.

Chua’s election to the party top leadership has been nothing more than another failed leader, continuously playing an active patronage role in support of Umno’s anaemic politics of race supremacy against a political background of Umnoputra sectarian elitist rule.

Instead of fulfilling his promises and aspirations made during his presidency contest in 2010, Chua is just muddling through a bewildering display of barking at the opposition coalition and political gamesmanship to control his power-base within the party.

Chua fooling the public

Since he ousted his rival predecessor Ong Tee Keat prematurely from serving a full term as party president, Chua’s leadership performance has been eye-gouging, to say the least.

His greatest asset has been grooming his son, Tee Yong, to a political climb and his greatest liability remains his sex scandal in 2008.

His hollow rhetoric to complaints about government policies is often tinged with sarcasm and arrogance while constantly heaping praises upon his political master, Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, for the latter’s commitment to fairness and justice which benefited the Chinese community.

The glaring hypocrisy of his public statements against the grain of truth and lack of moral justification seems to justify that only twisted information exists in the cyber world.

Forbidding his members and leaders from participating in rallies to uphold human rights and electoral reforms are wrong but participating in Perkasa’s activities is perfectly allowable.

Pulling wool over the public eyes, Chua is probably hoping the public has amnesia over longstanding, unresolved promises made by his party.

Erosion of non-Bumiputera rights and meagre economic benefits have rendered today’s Chinese community to be grossly under-represented in equity-stake ownerships in almost all the strategic economic sectors of banking, technology, utilities and infrastructure, lopsided racial composition in the civil service, armed forces.

Notwithstanding the fact that his party leadership has lost forever some of the important Cabinet portfolios which MCA leaders have held in the 1960s.

Instead, this pathetic party leadership is grateful for the occasional financial allocations to Chinese schools and new villages.

‘MCA must work for all’

MCA has failed to take cognizance of the fact that the Malaysian mind-sets are moving away from political patronage vis-à-vis the BN system of promoting discrimination or divisive race-based policies in governance.

“The idea of MCA is not only to put into practice the process on Malayanising and making the Chinese in this country patriotic and loyal to this land but its basic aim is (also) to kill communalism, not to foster it,” said MCA founding father Tun Tan Cheng Lock when addressing the Malacca Chinese Chamber of Commerce in 1952.

“The MCA must work for all and be broadminded. Its motto is ‘not for Chinese only’ but for all Malayans,” Cheng Lock emphasised, with a vision for the party to de-communalise racial politics decades ahead of his time.

Party delegates and critics alike are beginning to realise that Chua’s greatest achievement has been grooming his son, Chua Tee Yong, to a higher political climb and appointing him to key portfolios including taking charge of managing the party’s billion-ringgit assets.

Chua’s spinners might speak of his great achievements in various community projects since he helmed the party’s presidency, but all his oratory of uplifting, transformation and party unity has made no difference in changing the air.
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Stanley Koh is a former head of MCA’s research unit. He is a FMT columnist.