WATCHING from the sideline as the sickening melodrama of the ongoing MCA crisis unfolds before us, we cannot help but cringe from the ugliness of the naked power struggle within this 60-year-old political party claiming to fight for the Chinese community in Malaysia.From the original Datuk Seri Ong Tee Kiat and Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek factions, we are now told of a Third Force that tipped the balance of votes in carrying the motion of noconfidence against Ong’s tenure as the MCA President.
The smoke from the battlefield of the MCA Oct 10 extraordinary general meeting (EGM) had hardly died down, when from Ong’s own support group, a number of Central Committee members hitherto loyal to Ong had agitated for the forced resignation of Ong from the presidency. This led Ong to lament publicly the disappearance of long-time friendship in politics.
To fight off this later sabotage on his presidency, Ong has invoked his presidential power to call for another EGM, this time to decide whether there should not be another EGM to re-elect the entire CC.
That is probably the least unsatisfactory option out of all the unsatisfactory options open to MCA to resolve the crisis. A fresh election would restore legitimacy to the new group of MCA leaders.
The current crop of MCA CC members — including the newly promoted deputy president Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai — are dead set against the idea, because if there is a fresh round of election for the Central Committee, they may just be voted out.
Meanwhile, DAP’s Segambut MP Lim Lip Eng made a police report about a Malaysia Today story over the alleged ‘gift’ of a RM600,000 car made by Axis Construction Sdn Bhd (ACSB) to the wife of Liow, who is the Health Minister. The Malaysia Today article alleged that ACSB features prominently in the Health Ministry’s list of contractors.
Liow has denied the allegation, and the police have referred the case to the MACC.
Obviously, democracy works in very strange ways within the MCA. They have democracy in form, but do they have democracy in substance.
It is true that democracy works best at resolving internal conflict within a nation state as well as within any political party. Democracy allows differences of opinions to be aired, so that the entire organisation can seek compromise and conciliation through the process of dialogue.
Within a mature democratic entity, the minority will respect the decision of the majority, but the majority will in turn respect the different views of the majority.
In MCA, as in many Malaysian political parties, the winner takes all the trophy of war. The losing minority is banished from the power centre, there never to come back to haunt the majority again.
Again and again, we see how in the past, whenever MCA crisis occurred, party comrades would attack fellow party members in ways more unscrupulous than the way they attack their real political foes in the DAP!
One has to ponder and ask: is there something in the Chinese cultural gene that impedes them from embracing the real spirit and substance of democracy?
The Chinese people are always very proud of their 5,000-year-old cultural heritage. There are not many ethnic communities in the world that can boast of such a long continuous historical legacy.
But the glaring anomaly in that brilliant cultural history is the continuation of the feudalistic system of absolute dictatorial dynastic rule by successive emperors. That outdated system was removed only at the beginning of the 20th century barely 100 years ago by a republican revolution led by Dr Sun Yet Sun. In fact, Dr Sun was the first Chinese leader who had launched the idea of democracy in China’s history!
Even today, the idea of democracy is still totally absent in mainland China. In Hong Kong, there are democrats there whose aspiration for a democratic government is always thwarted by the Chinese communist government in Beijing.
While democracy has found more fertile soil in Taiwan, politicians and voters still think of democratic politics around the personalities of their leaders, rather than the political principles, Rule of Law and institution building.
Perhaps what goes on in the MCA today is but a lingering remnant of the culture of intrigue, conspiracy, power play, betrayal, backstabbing, and horse trading that has always existed in the Emperor’s court for many centuries in the past.
There, the pursuit of political power and the furtherance of personal interest have been the guiding motivation for court officials to jostle for positions of power and influence.
All those court mandarins of old, as well as the present MCA leaders, are all learned scholars, well-versed in Confucian ethics. The true Confucian scholars though would not survive the court intrigue of past imperial dynasties, and neither will they be successful leaders in present day MCA.
Confucius was an idealistic humanist who believed in the virtue of learning and good governance. Realpolitik however, is forever determined by man’s baser instinct to seek dominance for power by hook and by crook.
China’s past court mandarins and present day MCA leaders are therefore more inspired by theorists of political and military strategies, like Machiavelli and Sun Tze. For them, the most important thing is to win, and nothing else counts. For them, justice belongs to those who are stronger, as the Sophists believed in Athens in 5th century BC.
What would the bulk of the Chinese voters in West Malaysia think about the MCA latest crisis? After all, they had just swung en masse to the Pakatan Rakyat in the March 8 general election last year! We can only speculate
from this side of the South China Sea. The turmoil in the MCA probably confirms and entrenches for the Chinese voters in West Malaysia that politicians in positions of power are more interested in grabbing positions and feathering their own nests.
They will point out that the internal haemorrhage within the MCA has nothing to do with the interests or the political future of the Malaysian Chinese community. It has everything to do with the fire of personal political ambition towards selfserving ends only.
Frankly, the MCA crisis cannot come at a worse time for the party and the BN coalition.
The political tsunami last year has reduced the MIC and Gerakan to the status of mosquito parties. Umno has been launched onto a course of self-renewal through their recent most general assembly. They need a strong MCA to regain the middle ground that has been taken away by the opposition Pakatan Rakyat.
And now MCA has chosen to embark on a selfdestructive path by going through this series of very divisive EGMs. There is also no guarantee that the new EGM will solve their problem, if those ambitious leaders do not know the art of inclusive reconciliation.
A new EGM may even create new problems, thereby extending the party crisis and putting the BN coalition on the chopping block of the next general election.
Meanwhile, Sarawak Chinese are also watching coolly a similar crisis brewing in the Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP).
The SUPP is the oldest political party in Sarawak. It has evolved through very dramatic times, to survive and succeed in becoming the second largest component of the Sarawak Barisan Nasional.
It has also suffered extensive defeats at the hands of the opposition DAP in the 2006 state general election, like MCA in 2008. The party needs badly to look mercilessly unto themselves, and begin a process of selfrenewal, to seek new directions for the party’s political struggle, and to redefine their role in Sarawak politics.
Instead, the SUPP is engaged in a very divisive internal strife over the formation of a new party branch in Dudong, an issue that has nothing to do with their Chinese electorate. Democracy certainly has not worked well with the SUPP. So what went wrong?
You have to ask: is Chinese politics always condemned to be divisive, so much so that it is unable to embrace the true democratic spirit of compromise and reconciliation?
(The writer can be reached at [email protected])