[Perhatikan krisis ini bukan sahaja membuat MCA tergugat tetapi ia sudah menjalar dan melarat sehingga membakar (dan membunuh juga?) sesiapa yang terjebak sebab itulah Mahathir begitu resah sehingga mengarahkan semua menutup mulut mereka! Tidak kira siapa yang menang akhirnya kerana mereka akan mewarisi parti yang semakin kehilangan moral, sakit dan sudah bercerai-berai jadinya sampai akhbar (dan masyarakat Cina juga) pun turut menjadi mangsanya. - Editor]

http://www.malaysiakini.com/columns/20020410013525.php

MCA crisis: party the ultimate loser

M.G.G.Pillai - 3:12pm Wed Apr 10th, 2002

The MCA crisis shifts from tragedy to farce and back again with each passing day. The president's men and the deputy president's men are in gridlock, outstaring each other in a dispute that must weaken the MCA and how it represents the Chinese community. Neither is prepared to give way in this run-up to the presidency.

The president, Dr Ling Liong Sik, believes he must have the unfettered right to remain MCA's sole voice for as long as he likes. The deputy president, Lim Ah Lek, is insistent the man has long outlived his usefulness.

Neither would give way, and whoever wins, the MCA is hobbled, its investments into the newspaper business bleeding it so badly its raison d'etre is in doubt.

In the latest twist, the MCA central committee rejected the Lim faction's demand for an emergency general meeting to discuss the phantom members it alleges is peppered in the party's new members list.

It cites spurious grounds to deny it: If held, it would be too late anyway for the new list of delegates would have been elected by then, and the EGM result moot. More than 70 percent of the delegates oppose it. Enough delegates withdrew from Lim's petition to disqualify it.

To put the knife in, Nanyang Siang Pau and China Press carried identical editorials to damn the request for the EGM on equally spurious grounds.

The MCA central committee has no right to refuse an offer or look into why an EGM is called. But it does not want it, raises irrelevant issues and twists the law to pain the Lim faction as party-poopers.

Neither would give way. The Ling faction, which controls the MCA now, has rejected the EGM, but the Lim faction is hell-bent on holding it.

Editorial massacre

The three newspapers MCA owns - The Star, Nanyang and China Press - is commandeered to do Ling's bidding, the extreme shrillness of voice reflecting their fears of what would happen to its gatekeepers if Ling should lose.

Given their extreme partisan coverage of this clash of the MCA titans, an editorial and management massacre is highly probable if Ling loses.

The Star management is especially vulnerable: it bought Nanyang Press without due diligence, found itself with 93 percent of its shares, must dispose of 63 percent soon, or take it private. It is caught in a Catch-22 conundrum from which escape is near impossible.

The newspapers are full of self-serving postures of both factions, each raising its voice but neither explaining or looking at their battles in MCA's own role. It is, like many a political confrontation in Malaysia, reduced to one group demanding the president be returned and another that he be thrown out.

But this functions as it should, for there comes a time when every MCA president is forced out for staying on too long, and he goes screaming and in high dudgeon.

For when he leaves, he loses his perks of office, his high profile in government, the adulation he gets wherever and whenever he moves as the demigod he is made out to be.

He does not understand - indeed no non-Malay Malaysian leader in the Barisan Nasional does - he is no more than a performing seal for Umno.

That was not his role when he started out: He was an active participant. In the years since, he compromised himself to remain in power and today it is not unusual for a coalition party leader to stay on for a lifetime in politics. Several have been party presidents for two decades and more.

The communities they represent have no say. But those communities are not prepared to accept their nominal leaders, demand answers they would rather not answer, and worry the party leaders no end. And the more insecure their hold, the more intense the party infighting.

Manufactured crisis

The MCA's battle royale is typical. Ling thought he could do as he liked, and did. He promised to step down, then refused, made a pact with Lim that both would, then reneged, all the while hoping he could pull it through. He got Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad's nominal support. With that, he set out to cut Lim's coattails. That brought it into this fight-to-the-death irrelevance it now is.

It is reduced to who should be MCA president, not how each would improve the lot of the Chinese community, and how. I have spoken to both sides, and I get no sense of what they stand for, except to destroy the other faction.

In other words, a vendetta of sorts is in place whoever wins.

Is this how MCA would wean back waning Chinese Malaysian support? Has either faction thought through how it could get back some modicum of respect in the Barisan Nasional when it is embroiled in an irrelevant quarrel within the MCA?

The Lim faction would not comment when I asked if it would amend the constitution to remove the untrammeled power of the president. In other words, little would change in the party no matter who wins.

In other words, is this another wayang kulit (shadow play) that Malaysian political parties are famous for, and the battle royale in the MCA a fight of the proxies of Umno leaders?

Or is it where one faction believes the other had had their run of power, and it is now their turn? That nothing would change, except the president's men would be exchanged for the new president's men?

For when all is said and done, one sees a futility in this manufactured crisis in the MCA. Nothing is about to change no matter who wins. All it would result is a horrendous bloodletting the victors would demand of the losers.

If that is followed by a clear statement of principles it would abide by, and bring the MCA back to some respectability, this could make a difference.

But that is not how each faction looks upon its role: It is to destroy the other faction and its supporters. I found it curious that neither looks upon its relations with Umno and the BN in this fight for survival.

It looks like a gang clash for a small corner which is of total irrelevance to the larger and more deadly battlefield for the Malay mind.