It is so with the other parties in the Alliance. The Malayan Indian Congress was formed in 1946 to fight for Indian independence. When India did become independent the following year, the MIC president became India's ambassador to Rome and the Vatican while several committee members became the first ambassadors to other countries. It reoriented itself to Malayan independence only after the next president, a KL lawyer named K. Devasar, took office. In 1952, Malaysia ceased to be an immigrant nation, and those who had come before 30 April of that year was allowed to become Malayans. Those living in the country were allowed to become subjects of the ruler and automatically became Federal citizens. My father became a Johore subject that way. He had included my name in his citizenship as I was 13 at that time. I could use that in 1956 to get my federal citizenship. He was not an MIC member because the prevailing rules then gave preference to the North Indians as it is the Tamils today. He was a Dato' Onn supporter, partly because he knew the man, and hosted him in our house when he stood for what is now four constituencies in the 1955 federal elections. The MIC took a downturn with the third president, Tun V.T. Sambanthan, who took office in 1954, was in the Alliance team which went to London to negotiate for Malaysia's independence, and was in the cabinet on independence, but remained 20 years as MIC president till 1974, when he was forced out. The next president, Tan Sri V. Manickavasagam, in office for about five years, drew up plans to uplift the Indian community, the Blue Book, but he reasoned rightly that it had no money. He died in office, and his successor, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, in office since 1979, implements the ideas contained in the Blue Book to his benefit and to the detriment of the Indian community he leads. He is hostile to those who wrote the Blue Book. Which is why he did not have a good word for either the late S. Pathmanaban or the current deputy, Dato' S. Subramaniam. He now takes a leaf out of UMNO by not wanting his deputy, and has his own choice in this year's election. He is in the cabinet where he could ask for the Indian community to be helped. But he dare not if it means his position in it is affected. So he goes along with UMNO, and the Indian community must fend for itself. The People's Progressive Front, formed by the Seenivasagam brothers in the 1960s, and a Indian party with multiracial members was brought in to keep the Indians within the National Front. But it does not work.

We have nothing to celebrate on the 48th birthday of Malaysia. In Malaysia, the Chinese and Indians are relegated as "pendatang" (arrivals). Those who trace their background to the early days of british rule in Malaya cannot still get their citizenship while those from the Indonesian islands can get it after a year's stay here for that would increase the Malays here. In the 1931 census, the Malays in Selangor had their parents born overseas. Part of it is the British probem. They could not persuade the sultans to issue citizenship except by an involved procedure. It was only after the war, with the formation of the Federation of Malaya in 1948, that sultans could issue citizenships to those who had lived in their state for a number of years. My father became a subject of the ruler of Johore in 1952, 22 years after he had decided to live here. It was only in 1957 that he became a federal citizen, and I, who was born in Johore Bahru, became one as a result. But my father had thrown in his lot to Malaysia early on, and he was criticised by the Malaysian Indian Congress (now part of the BN) for forsaking his Indian citizenship! Now it is an obstacle course for a Chinese or an Indian to take his citizenship.

The matter has died down. There was no discussion about it in the mainstream media. It embarrassed the leaders of every BN party besides UMNO, and where the leaders cling to office at any cost so what matters is not the organisation he leads but he and he alone. The Malaysian Indian Congress, for instance, is in terminal decline. But its president does not think so. He believes that what needs to be done is change its slogan: from MAIKA (the Tamil initials of the MIC) cares to Maika hears. A cosmetic change he believes would set it right. But the same old noise runs it to ground.

For Pak Lah's most intractible task is to draw up the list of candidates. The BN fiction is that he and he alone decides. It is convenient. The BN political party presidents evade would rather let the BN president decide than face wrathful members. Over the years, this firmed his hand so he now can drop non-UMNO candidates at will. Power is secured in his hands so thoroughly, and uses it to the full that there is no nonsense that he is primus inter pares, first amongst equals. There is more. The BN parties submit their lists of candidates for his approval. But he interferes to correct blatant inconsistencies and ommissions. The saga of the People's Progressive Party president, Dato' M. Kayveas' search for a parliamentary seat is typical. He was not given it, but Pak Lah wants him to have it. The question is where. He had worked hard for the new parliamentary constituency of Cameron Highlands. But other parties wanted it too: first, the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, then the Malaysian Indian Congress. He was then offered the overwhelmingly Malay constituency of Bukit Gantang, in Perak. But not after some untypical BN arm-twisting. But it is still unclear where, or if, he would. Now the MIC deputy president, Dato' Seri S. Subramaniam, so say his crest-fallen supporters, is denied his parliamentary constituency. He would probably get it. Pak Lah is not known to desert any closely aligned to him.

That is not all. In Cameron Highlands, the Indian community leaders warned that if Dato' Kayveas is not the candidate, the Indians, 27 per cent of the voters, would boycott or spoil the ballot papers. All of a sudden, this safe seat, with the opposition expected to get no more than 21 per cent of the votes, became marginal if the Indians carried out the threat. This is not as far-fetched as it seems. In 1969, the MCA replaced a popular state assemblyman for Kuala Kubu Bahru in Selangor; more than 5,000 of his supporters spoilt their ballots, far more than the winner's tally. What is surprising is the Malaysian Indian Congress's absence here. It once had a state assemblymen here. But an aggressive Dato' Kayveas established his credentials there. It is not known if he would now get the constituency, but the resurgent PPP is one to watch. It is this that led the MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, to consider him as his possible successor. The other major Indian grouping, Dato' M.G. Pandithan's Indian Progressive Front, is lost in the wilderness. The IPF is not in the BN, with no chance it would so long as the MIC leader would not allow it. It is fair to assume he would not the PPP either, if it was not already in the BN.

This refrain is hallowed in a disbelievable statesman-like vision. They talk, with no intent to carry it out, of a new multiracial party. The leaders did not consult their general assemblies, which is typical of how they take decisions on their behalf. That this merger plan comes now, amidst a new Prime Minister and expected General Election, in an attempt to convince a Chinese community which faults the MCA and the Gerakan for much of its ills. The political leadership is at odds with the community at large. But this is not a fear of the Chinese political leadership alone. UMNO has to reinvent itself into a political party with a theocratic bias to deflect the challenge from the Opposition theocratic Parti Islam Malaysia (PAS). The Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) flirts with two Indian political parties, the nominally multiracial People's Progressive Party (PPP) and the Indian Progressive Front (IPF), to merge into the MIC under its leadership. None would admit that driving this push is the party leaders' dislike for the men who would succeed them.

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