I'm not ignoring the fact and existence of BN as a large coalition of political parties. But, whatever one may say, we cannot ignore that the original duumvirate was UMNO and MCA.
Recall my blog post some time ago here about the personal friendship between Ong Yoke Lin of Kuala Lumpur MCA Branch (later Tun Omar Ong Yoke Lin, past Speaker of Dewan Negara and founder of the air-conditioning company, OYL Industries Bhd) and Datuk Yahaya bin Abdul Razak of Kuala Lumpur UMNO Branch that had led to the idea for an UMNO-MCA alliance to contest the Kuala Lumpur Municipal elections in 1952.
Times may have changed. Players may be different.
What remains immutable is the fact that in the current ethos UMNO and MCA, being the underpinning foundation of BN needs to dig deeper to somehow reach into the original 1952 spirit and pull it to the present.
In 1952, UMNO was, in fact, weaker than the MCA. It's hard to imagine isn't it? The giant at the time was the Independence of Malaya Party (IMP).
The MCA President of the time, Tun Sir Tan Cheng Lock was a personal friend of Dato' Onn Jaafar of the IMP.
Yet, Ong Yoke Lin and Yahya bin Abdul Razak did the scoundrel thing and, in their infinite wisdom, created the seeds of the alliance between UMNO and MCA that has lasted all this while.
I know many within the UMNO ranks of today are foaming at the mouth in a rabid desire to do what comes naturally...kill all the Chinese in one form or another. We all know that kind of thinking is unhelpful.
At the street level, UMNO people are sensible. It's only when they don their superhero UMNO cape that the id comes to the fore.
Right now, UMNO must surely realise that the MCA's travails are not merely internal.
The MCA is struggling largely because of the perception has changed.
The voters know that the UMNO-MCA relationship has not been the same since 1952. It worsened after 1969. It has become worse with the passage of years. The broader BN coalition has not helped.
So here's the rub.
Can UMNO go it alone? Will it always remain one step ahead of PAS and PKR?
Can UMNO forever make DAP the bogeyman for the Malays?
If one were to take the long view, through the prism of a telescope that starts from 1952, it may be easier to get a contextual understanding of the symbiosis between UMNO and the MCA.
Leaving aside historical nostalgia, UMNO lending the MCA some "face" makes future sense.
As with all things that require retail support, not only should UMNO and the MCA re-engage each mother more meaningfully...they must be SEEN to re-engage as near-equals.
Without this framework of understanding and common purpose no amount of "transformation" of the MCA will gain traction.
The ball is very much in UMNO's court in this respect.
UMNO must not ignore the fact that the PKR-PAS-DAP pact is reaching an apogee of sorts. The drag is setting in. Are you going to take advantage of it?
Times may have changed. Players may be different.
What remains immutable is the fact that in the current ethos UMNO and MCA, being the underpinning foundation of BN needs to dig deeper to somehow reach into the original 1952 spirit and pull it to the present.
In 1952, UMNO was, in fact, weaker than the MCA. It's hard to imagine isn't it? The giant at the time was the Independence of Malaya Party (IMP).
The MCA President of the time, Tun Sir Tan Cheng Lock was a personal friend of Dato' Onn Jaafar of the IMP.
Yet, Ong Yoke Lin and Yahya bin Abdul Razak did the scoundrel thing and, in their infinite wisdom, created the seeds of the alliance between UMNO and MCA that has lasted all this while.
I know many within the UMNO ranks of today are foaming at the mouth in a rabid desire to do what comes naturally...kill all the Chinese in one form or another. We all know that kind of thinking is unhelpful.
At the street level, UMNO people are sensible. It's only when they don their superhero UMNO cape that the id comes to the fore.
Right now, UMNO must surely realise that the MCA's travails are not merely internal.
The MCA is struggling largely because of the perception has changed.
The voters know that the UMNO-MCA relationship has not been the same since 1952. It worsened after 1969. It has become worse with the passage of years. The broader BN coalition has not helped.
So here's the rub.
Can UMNO go it alone? Will it always remain one step ahead of PAS and PKR?
Can UMNO forever make DAP the bogeyman for the Malays?
If one were to take the long view, through the prism of a telescope that starts from 1952, it may be easier to get a contextual understanding of the symbiosis between UMNO and the MCA.
Leaving aside historical nostalgia, UMNO lending the MCA some "face" makes future sense.
As with all things that require retail support, not only should UMNO and the MCA re-engage each mother more meaningfully...they must be SEEN to re-engage as near-equals.
Without this framework of understanding and common purpose no amount of "transformation" of the MCA will gain traction.
The ball is very much in UMNO's court in this respect.
UMNO must not ignore the fact that the PKR-PAS-DAP pact is reaching an apogee of sorts. The drag is setting in. Are you going to take advantage of it?
3 comments:
"Reviving the UMNO-MCA spirit"
DM,
Yes indeed.
Just to share this...
http://dinmerican.wordpress.com/2013/08/05/mca-from-top-dog-to-an-umno-poodle/
The two sides of a coin : The Crisis of 1987 – 1988 - http://jebatmustdie.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/the-two-sides-of-a-coin-the-crisis-of-1987-1988/
"...The years of 1987 and 1988 can be deemed as the most trying years for the then Prime Minsiter. Apart from the devastating Umno elections in 1987, which proves to be the watershed for several amendmends in the Umno Constitution and the suspension of the Lord President in 1988, we witnessed the rise of racial tension and an unprecedented power struggle between the Malays and the Chinese.
The events were best captured in these articles below:
By Graham K Brown - Balancing the Risks of Corrective Surgery: The political economy of horizontal inequalities and the end of the New Economic Policy in Malaysia..."
"...On a side note, after Umno was declared unlawful and cease to exist on 4th February 1988, Malaysia effectively had no Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and many other ministers from Umno.
The next leader in line was non other than Datuk Seri (now Tun) Ling Liong Sik as MCA holds the most seats in the Dewan Rakyat.
He chaired the subsequent cabinet meeting without the presence of all Umno ministers including Dr Mahathir.
Malaysia was effectively ruled by an MCA President at that time even if it was for a short while.
MCA could have staged a coup d e’tat of the country on their own but they did not.
For that, Umno was forever grateful to the MCA..." unquote.
“UMNO” or “Mahathir” was forever grateful to the "MCA" or "Datuk Seri (now Tun) Ling Liong Sik"…!
You be the judge.
Shalom.
It may be invidious onto others to be derelict in memory of two things the MCA had done for Umno:
one, bailed out Umno in its formative years;
two, stood by Umno when it was deregistered.
That said, it beggars belief how the Umno of today can say the Chinese are ungrateful just because many of them had not voted for Barisan.
If it thinks so of them, does it mean Umno has conveniently forgotten those Chinese members of an Mca that had saved Umno - twice?
If it thinks so of them, does it mean the Umno leadership only operates under the Bush doctrine, namely "if you are not for me, you are against me so look at the sky for here comes my megatons"?
If it thinks so of them, does it mean Umno is against them for wanting to fight federal and state corruption, and therefore, Umno in being against any fight against corruption, is partial to defending corruption, despite the window-dressed use of public funds to the tune of Rm900 million a year for an Macc that is a toothless pussycat that has only caught some ikan-bili's while the sharks of slumberland continue to reap and rape the federal and state coffers down to their last kopek? Money, incidentally, that could have been used to build homes, jobs and education?
I submit to your Honor this - how can the Umno-Mca spirit be revived if Umno has no sense of any gratitude and can only act arrogant, furthermore along only the racial line, while pretending to talk men-hen about 1Malaysia while practicing in actuality the very apartheid system of South Africa that the Chief Racist of this country had railed against, seemingly out of some milk of humanity, tainted it seems by some twisted logic that what applies elsewhere need not apply at home for the same breed of political expediency?
The Umno of today is nothing like the Umno of yesteryear. Where today can you find those Umno members who treat others as human beings and who respect, honor and protect the rights and space of others not of their race because they know anything done on the basis of race will ultimately fly against not just historical fact but also the common humanity and institutional integrity on which this nation was founded?
Where? Under the carpet? Too much dirt of foulness and felonies. In the drawer? Already emptied of all evidence that would have nailed all the piratization schemers.
We are run by people with no culture, no principles and no gumption to do the right things. They can't even do their wrong things with greater finesse.
So why revive a spirit that will only reinforce the continuation of the crimes of the century? One would think ghost-busters should be invoked instead.
When Najib nailed CSL in the Mca's very own hall by saying the Mca needs political viagra, he was arrogantly and insensitively hitting at CSL personally in front of his men, thereby casting support for Liow and Wee who will therefore have to continue the ball-less arrangement of playing the goodcop-badcop role with Umno rightwingers, exactly the reason why so many of your Chinese folks have run away from their party.
When Najib left unreprimanded his Perlis Umno Youth's chief tirade against Wee for saying Umno must not rake racial sentiments anymore, and that by saying your Mca must not be defended at the expense of Umno, is everyone to believe that the Mca must therefore toe the line of an Umno that is publicly and openly working against harmony, 1Malaysia and the integrity of national administration for the good of all rakyat?
If the Mca dies tomorrow, it is all and only because of Umno, a party it had saved at least twice, a party whose antics it had had to endure countless times just for the trite tradition of trying to keep alive something already in the ICU of the history of this nation.
Look at the bloody political landscape today. Nothing but crooks stealing from the rakyat and the country and racists seizing power and blackmailing the rakyat, and defiling their means to change the government.
When the oil and the money dry up, and funds have all been siphoned offshore, then the 47% clueless idiots will have to wake up.
Morituri te salutan?
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