MCA crisis; where would it take our nation?

By Sim Kwang Yang

This is the season for internal warfare within MCA as both sides in this Ong-Chua tussle are now openly engaged in very ugly exchange of words in the media.  It looks now that the chance of any mediation to resolve the party crisis is razor thin.

Many Chinese citizens have expressed their loss of interest in following this latest round of power struggle in the MCA.  They say that, whichever side emerges victorious in the end, the MCA will just be its old self, as the junior partner of BN, that gives credibility to UMNO’s myth of the Social Contract and power sharing among the races.

This contemptuous lack of interest in the ongoing MCA crisis is the trend of the Chinese people to-day that regard the party as having alienated the Chinese community.  It is a sharp contrast to the MCA image at one time that the MCA represented the Chinese, and the Chinese could find salvation in multiracial Malaysia only through the MCA.

But, say what you like, MCA is still one of the oldest political parties in Malaysia, and the second largest component party in the ruling Barisan Nasional.  The party boasted of having a million members at one time.  They still have a national party structure, and have considerable financial and political clout.

The party may have lost a great deal of electoral territory to the Pakatan Rakyat in the March 8 general election last year.  But the MCA ship is far from being completely wrecked yet.  As an old Chinese saying goes, you can salvage four kati of iron nails from a wrecked ship!

Therefore, we should follow closely the unfolding drama in this current MCA crisis and see it not just as a typical power struggle between two over-ambitious leaders, but as a reflection of the future development of national politics in Malaysia.

Writer Pan Yong Chiang has written in his column in net news portal The Rock News that you can actually trace the current party crisis to the scandal.  When Ong decided to blow the whole issue open, he had indeed open up the Pandora box of the close network between big business and politics in the country.

In that bloated body of the PKFZ cash cow, God knows how many prominent personalities from various BN component parties have benefited directly or indirectly from tax payers’ money.  The opening up of the PKFZ can of worms has perhaps driven the formation of an alliance from all sides to topple Ong as MCA President and Transport Minister.  They have found a useful front man in Chua Soi Lek.

Another issue is the power relationship between UMNO and MCA.  Part of the reason for the electoral debacle suffered by the MCA has been the public perception among Chinese voters that MCA has increasingly sunk to the status of a vassal in relation to UMNO.  The party is seen as no longer capable of representing Chinese interest within the UMNO coalition.  The myth of power sharing by all races in the BN coalition has been broken.

Ong has the reputation of being fiercely independent-minded.  He is seen as the only MCA new generation of leaders who can stand up to UMNO, in sharp contrast to the previous presidents Ong Ka Ting and Lim Liong Sik.

In the pending EGM, if Ong can win the endorsement of the central delegates, it will be a boost to his credential as a reformist MCA president, in re-negotiating a kind of new deal with UMNO, in reviving the party’s fortune in the years to come.

If Ong loses, then it will be a victory of the old warlords and lingering remnants of the Ling Liong Sik era, and the MCA will continue to flounder at the polls in future.  Its end will be imminent.

But there have been observers who point out that currently MCA depends on UMNO for their survival.  Their MPs have been routed out of the constituencies with an absolute Chinese majority by the DAP in urban centres.  Their candidates can only win seats with a significant Malay presence.  They depend on UMNO, and there is no way they can re-negotiate for a new basis for more equitable power relation between the two parties.

In the past, whenever MCA was going through a similar power struggle, UMNO would intervene at the critical time, and MCA would emerge weaker after the crisis.

That may be true in the past.  But we are living under a vastly changed political sky.  UMNO is itself under severe threat from PAS and PKR, and the seven victories for PR in the last 8 by-elections must have sent the alarm bells screaming through the bowels of the monolithic UMNO machinery.

In short, MCA has been weakened to the point where to weaken it further by UMNO might be tantamount to signing the death warrant for the MCA in the next general election.  If MCA is wiped out, then the UMNO-dominated BN’s facade of power-sharing among races would vanish, given that MIC and Gerakan are unlikely to find a second wind after their defeat last year.

The talk of UMNO enticing a faction in PAS in readiness of an all Malay/Muslim rule in Malaysia is fine.  But in multiracial Malaysia, this proposition would destroy the legitimacy of political power.

Already, we hear UMNO top leaders expressing publicly their anxious wish for the MCA crisis to be resolved quickly, and for the party to emerge stronger from the resolution.  If the crisis turns out to be as prolonged and spiteful as the one between Neo Yee Pan and Tan Khoon Swan between 1984 and 1985, it will damage the image of the BN deeply, and UMNO may also suffer from the aftermath.

The way I see it, even if Ong wins this current contest, I doubt if he will have an easy time in leading the MCA out of the doldrums.  He has only a few short years to clean up his party of all that garbage accumulated through many decades of bad politics and warlordism within the MCA.  He has to recruit new political talents which are in short supply now in his party.  It will be a task that even Hercules would balk at!

Then in the general election, his party candidates will have to face sabotage from the disgruntled leaders and members from within MCA in all corners of the peninsula.

So, the outcome of the MCA power struggle we are witnessing now will have great consequences upon the political future of the country.  In this period of critical transition in our nation’s history, we have to pay close attention to the daily blow-by-blow reports of the melodrama that is playing out before a national audience.

(SKY can be reached at kenyalang578@hotmail.com )

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