There is so much that I want to say about the MCA. Not so much about the current feud, which is typical political intemperance which breaks out every now and then, but more about the context and place that this historic party that was formed in 1949 occupies in the minds of Malaysians, particularly Chinese Malaysians.
Tan Cheng Lock pix from here.
The party's leadership was originally very elitist, being drawn from the wealthy Peranakan Chinese and wealthy Kuomintang activists in colonial Malaya.
Leong Yew Koh pix from here.
I do wish to say this to Ong Tee Keat, Chua Soi Lek and their respective supporters - your party has a great history within the grand narrative of Malayan and Malaysian independence and nation-building. Your in-fighting is killing your own party's great history without which neither you nor the party will have any residual value.
The imagery of the MCA, as things stand, is about a "chair-throwing instigator" fighting with an "adulterous fornicator" against a backdrop of a PKFZ wasteland with an aimless and meandering non-narrative about nothing. It has all the makings of a Razzie-winning plotless movie.
Tan Siew Sin pix from here.
In the aftermath of one of the greatest electoral disasters for the MCA since 1969, one would have thought that the party faithful should be rallying around each other and fostering a united front to ensure that the party strengthens itself by understanding why it was rejected by the voters - instead, Malaysians are exposed to the awful and tawdry spectacle of power-grabbing, back-stabbing and, generally, the basest forms of human instincts.
pix from here.
If the party dies - and, maybe it should for having spawned "leaders" such as these - the main cause must surely be the anachronistic system of patronage that is the common thread in the founding members of the BN coalition.
It is this system of patronage that has caused the type of political in-breeding that has created monstrous outcomes.
That the issue of genuine party reform with the goal of re-connecting with the Malaysian voters is not even an issue in the tussle for power, speaks volumes about the bankruptcy of ideas and, morals, of the current MCA leadership.
By the way, please stop using Three Kingdoms characters as metaphors to create allegorical imagery in describing the feuding parties. That is an insult to the great mythical Chinese heroes. But, if you have to resort to these things I only wish to know who is Zhuge Liang in all of this fiasco?
pix from here.
Okay. That's enough sneering, snarly, sniffly words...for now.
Tan Cheng Lock pix from here.The party's leadership was originally very elitist, being drawn from the wealthy Peranakan Chinese and wealthy Kuomintang activists in colonial Malaya.
Leong Yew Koh pix from here.I do wish to say this to Ong Tee Keat, Chua Soi Lek and their respective supporters - your party has a great history within the grand narrative of Malayan and Malaysian independence and nation-building. Your in-fighting is killing your own party's great history without which neither you nor the party will have any residual value.
The imagery of the MCA, as things stand, is about a "chair-throwing instigator" fighting with an "adulterous fornicator" against a backdrop of a PKFZ wasteland with an aimless and meandering non-narrative about nothing. It has all the makings of a Razzie-winning plotless movie.
Tan Siew Sin pix from here.In the aftermath of one of the greatest electoral disasters for the MCA since 1969, one would have thought that the party faithful should be rallying around each other and fostering a united front to ensure that the party strengthens itself by understanding why it was rejected by the voters - instead, Malaysians are exposed to the awful and tawdry spectacle of power-grabbing, back-stabbing and, generally, the basest forms of human instincts.
pix from here.If the party dies - and, maybe it should for having spawned "leaders" such as these - the main cause must surely be the anachronistic system of patronage that is the common thread in the founding members of the BN coalition.
It is this system of patronage that has caused the type of political in-breeding that has created monstrous outcomes.
That the issue of genuine party reform with the goal of re-connecting with the Malaysian voters is not even an issue in the tussle for power, speaks volumes about the bankruptcy of ideas and, morals, of the current MCA leadership.
By the way, please stop using Three Kingdoms characters as metaphors to create allegorical imagery in describing the feuding parties. That is an insult to the great mythical Chinese heroes. But, if you have to resort to these things I only wish to know who is Zhuge Liang in all of this fiasco?
Okay. That's enough sneering, snarly, sniffly words...for now.
2 comments:
The present tussle is but a proxy continuation of the old altercation between KS Lee and LS Ling.
The latter has a huge financial overhang brought about by overexuberant stock market play by one of his charges. One may also surmise the tunship came from background support of the eminence grise of umno politics during one critical time when that party was invalidated from the rolls.
Put everything together and there may be an answer somewhere on what PFKZ is really all about. Was that project just about the cronyism, or did it reach higher and elsewhere whose revelation will have to be squashed, attention deflected and suspicions allayed else the very foundation of not just the MCA but also Umno will be shaken to their loosening roots?
We have seen this sort of thing happening in other white collar crime cases of this country. And at least one homicide case.
It has become not just the irrelevance of a feud. It has become the irrelevance of the parties of Barisan Nasional.
Look at the political history of this country. What has it all been about? Photo opportunities and for-show heated exchanges over issues which could have been averted if all would face up to global realities and not distributive formulas on geographies no larger than the shade of the next local coconut tree.
Issues which could have been avoided are in fact magnified so that politicians on white horses could be seen in technicolor riding in heroically for the next voting support to perpetuate the status quo of communal defense when the rules of arbitration had already been unilaterally decided elsewhere with the final result being loss of trust, poodling, non-coinable opportunity costs and international disrepute debilitating to the cause of economic pro-business objectives.
So what is the relevance of the parties of Barisan Nasional? Middle-aged men and women in uniforms rah-rahing to themselves? Ministers squirming for the next word in minds unprepared because they are untrained for the complexities of modern-day management of a plural nation? Spending more time on one damage control after another when all energies should have been focused on rebuilding this nation within a new framework of accountability, transparency, integrity, efficiency, foresight and intelligence?
Today the only relevance of Barisan Nasional, especially Umno, MCA and MIC and Gerakan, is their perceived relevance to themselves. They are all only shioking themselves silly. So long as they run on the gas of adulterated zero-sum games, they will run themselves out of the new orbits of citizen choices.
MCA may want to think about pulling out of the coalition and restarting as independents with stronger wings in.....Sabah and Sarawak. At least that will be a start to redemption for all the juvenile delinquencies of the politics we have seen day in day out from the so-called best that have emerged out of the fifty three years of wondrous nation-building.
To Walla, please do not even think of infecting Sarawak with MCA. Thanks but no thanks, as we already have an MCA-type party here called SUPP and we are trying to get rid of it. Perhaps we should export SUPP to W. Malaysia to merge with MCA? We are sick and tired of getting cast-offs from W. Malaysia.
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