The crisis the MCA president, Ling Liong Sik, insisted is not now threatens to subsume him. He refused to admit his rift with his deputy president, Lim Ah Lek, warning newspapers and reporters not to write about it. He. naively and arrogantly, believed that then all was well. Lim, no longer a minister for he resigned when the crisis first broke into the open, could not possibly have right on his side, for that is after all reserved for Ling as MCA president. This obdurate arrogance now brings him down.

Would it? Then the MCA and the Gerakan ought to reunite under Ling Liong Sik. Since the People's Progressive Party is, to all intents and purposes, an Indian party, the PPP should also with MIC. If Gerakan and PPP are multiracial, not racial, parties, than they should unite instead.

The KL Monorail is now on track, so the transport minister, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, avers. Work on it began in January 1997 and was to have been completed in time for the Commonwealth Games in 1998. It was not. The Asian financial crisis is why, we are told. It was not. The Berjaya Group chairman and establishment crony, Tan Sri Vincent Tan, who was given the concenssion to build and run the monorail, could not. Despite a RM300 million soft loan, payable when able, it got stuck. The Commonwealth Games came and went. Now, two-and-a-half years later, work has re-started but with Tan Sri Vincent Tan. Strapped as he is for cash, he sold his interest and got out.

Would the MCA Youth say that its national president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, was not manipulated, highly principled and thoroughly trustworthy when he decided he would not resign, after telling the MCA leadership he would, because the Prime Minister would not let him? If what Dr Ling did was correct, then Mr Rustam is wrong. He made the fatal mistake to assume that in politics words are not what the dictionary tells you they mean. As George Orwell, in his famous essay, tells you, they do not. The MCA leaders have taken Orwell to heart even if they do not know who he is or why his essay is important.

That cannot hold for the Chinese cabinet ministers. The Chinese community holds them to account for their refusal to stand up and be counted. No Chinese minister has defended this unwarranted attack on the Chinese community. So, he and his Chinese colleagues in the cabinet endorse the Prime Minister's criticism of the community on whose support they survive. He first attacked Suqui in his National Day speech last August. In the four months since, the MCA ministers, particularly, kept quiet. But the MCA president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, believes he can neutralise the Suqui as effectively as the Prime Minister has neutralised him. He has as much influence on the Chinese community these days as the Prime Minister has on the Malay. So, it is not if the Prime Minister's attacks upsets the Chinese or Suqui or Chinese educationist, but how much more embattled the National Front Chinese political parties would be.

With the Lunas fallout sharply etched into its future, the National Front government is nervous and found scapegoats in Chinese educationists and the Suqui NGO. It is caught in its own rhetoric over Vision schools and wisely retired it from public discussion. But the Suqui's 17 points with its 83 demands is now used to raise racial tensions. The MCA president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, says the government acepts "98 per cent of the 83 demands", or at most two demands raise the ire. Another National Front party, Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia, says Suqiu did not demand the removal of Malay privileges. Why did not UMNO discuss this with its Chinese partners before it shot off its mouth in public? The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, wants Suqiu to withdraw its demands and "heal the fissures". So long as he rails about it as he does in public, it must raise racial tensions.

They blame the Chinese for losing the seat, one which even the MCA president, Dr Ling Liong Sik, accept. It is not. If the Malay vote had stayed with UMNO, Lunas would still be a National Front safe seat. It is not.

THE MCA SUPPORTS Vision Schools, insists it is voluntary, and its president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, instead of the education minister, Tan Sri Musa Mohamed, announces the first two vision schools to be set up -- in Subang Jaya and Johore Jaya. Far from being voluntary, the Prime Minister insists those schools who disagree are traitors and worse. The government cannot push this through so long as the Chinese schools refuse to participate. It is not that they would not. They do not know what it is all about. Even the MCA cabinet ministers are not confident about to face the Chinese community to explain it. The education minister announced it without consultation, it replaced the smart schools of his predecessor, which is now as good as nonexistent. As vision schools would be when the minister moves on. The government has not explained why this need to force vision schools into existence before the i's are dotted and t's crossed. And if it is clear policy, why does Dr Ling shy away from facing the Chinese community to explain what, in his view, is easily explained.

The Prime Minister grudgingly admits he is the cause of the defeat. But he then accuses every one else for the Lunas defeat. It is he and his coalition partners who raised both race and religion as an election issue. They would not allow the election, with all its boisterousness and exuberance, to wend its way to a successful conclusion. This angered them more. The opposition did not give them the opportunity to crack down on them by force. It is the National Front, not the Alternative Front, which harps on race and religion. It is the National Front which accuses the Chinese and Indians of extremism and worse. Its views, especially on Vision schools, is challenged, with the MCA and Gerakan sitting on the sidelines; it does not bother to explain it to the Chinese educationists' satisfaction, then brand them extremists, and the MCA president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, adding fuel to fire by announcing the first two vision schools. But he still would not explain to the Chinese educationists what the Vision school is about.

THE BANK OF CHINA returns to Malaysia after three decades with more branches that it dared hope or wanted. Foreign banks are restricted to the branches they already have, with those establishing offices for the first time allowed only one. But the Beijing bank is allowed 13 branches, one in each state. Its Kuala Lumpur office is at the ground floor banking hall of Plaza OSK in Jalan Ampang, opposite Wisma MCA. Four parking lots are reserved for officers of the bank in front of the building. The Bank of China arrives in stealth. The caution is understandable. The Malay ground see the Prime Minister in office only with Chinese support. The MCA president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, negotiated the deal with Beijing to claim credit with the Chinese community for bringing the bank to Malaysia. Beijing is shocked and ecstatic at what is offered Bank of China in Malaysia. In early stages of the negotiations, China rejected Malaysia's offer of 13 branches for Bank of China in return for a deposit of US$5 billion with the central bank, Bank Negara Malaysia. The bank is allowed only limited banking facilities elsewhere in the world.

The MCA mishandled the JE and CMT funds. It returned in interest nearly RM5 million that should have been scholarships for the needy. And the courts now force it to return the RM10 million CMT fund managed by its business arm, Multipurposes Holdings. No scholarships were every given. With no explanation why. The MCA leaders are its trustees, but they ignored the court case until after the CMT fund was ordered returned to the donor's estate. We now learn the MCA mishandled the JE Fund. It was meant for pig-farmers, but it went to others, including MCA officials. When the DAP highlighted it, the MCA President, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, threw a red herring about the DAP's own funds. If the DAP mismanaged its funds, the book should be thrown at it. Even if it had, how does this excuse the MCA's mishandling of its funds collected to ameliorate a human tragedy? The 200 acres the Negri Sembilan state government allotted as an alternative to the Bukit Pelanduk pig farms is converted and transferred to parties nothing to do with pig farms. The land alloted was within sight of KLIA, and therefore clearly unsuitable for pig farming. But no one talks about this now. Why did the MCA representative in the state executive council approve this, knowing full well it was not for the pig farmers. Was that a scam?

THE MCA, LIKE UMNO AND MIC, besides rotting leaders in common, threatens to follow the Mauritian dodo to extinction. Its leaders batten the hatches against change, branding as traitor any who suggests change to survive. Talk of reformation amongst moribund political leaders is verboten. So, the MCA youth chief, Dato' Ong Tee Keat, is in hot water for saying that without change, the party withers, without reforms chaos follows. This time it is an interview he gave Asiaweek. Earlier, his comments about the Chang Ming Thien education fund, he feared, could cost him his youth chief post in the 2002 party election. Comments like makes the MCA president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, shiver in his pants. And Dato' Ong dissembles. His comments are in good faith, which suggests he often makes questions in bad faith. Otherwise, why must he reassure his good faith? But what scuttles the MCA are leaders frightened of their shadows, challenge, questioning. The aging, irrelevant, leadership wants to stay on, and cannot understand why its members want them on the streets instead.

The MCA President and transport minister, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, is livid that opposition parties sell short Malaysia's commitment to press freedom. "Say it here (in Malaysia) as we have the press here and everything," he barks. "Why don't they say it within the country when we have the chance to reply rather than say it behind our back(s) when we have no chance to do so." Indeed, Dr Ling. His ire is directed at the Keadilian party's youth chief, Ezam Mohamed Noor, who told an opposition rally in the finance minister, Tun Daim Zainuddin's own backyard of Merbok, earlier this week that he went overseas to campaign for the release of He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost. My sources tell me 50,000 were present. The absolute commitment of the "press here and everything" ignored the gathering, reporting only the reply to a slanted account of what was said. The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi seems to think all this a storm in a teacup. He does not intend to ban Ezam from travelling overseas. Then why does Dr Ling bark up the wrong tree? Come, come, Pillai, you should not ask this question: he always barks up the wrong tree!

The MCA President, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, claims this fund was never with the MCA. He retreats into semantic gobbledygook. The Multi-Purpose Holdings was its investment arm, the fund's trustees MCA leaders, and if MCA is uninvolved, why is he nervous and party officials demand an accounting? Would Dr Ling say outright that the Multi-Purpose Holdings into which Dato' Chang paid the RM10 million to set up the fund was not an MCA investment vehicle? Why does MCA Youth ask too many pesky questions? Why should the MCA presidential council discuss the affair? When then is the fund managed by a high-powered trustee which includes the MCA president and other key officials? Who would meet the court order to return the funds? We do not know what the judgement of the high court said except that the funds have to be returned. The Multi-Purpose Holdings is no more what it was: today it is controlled by a non-Chinese, and its links with the MCA all but non-existent. The MCA leaders, including Dr Ling, had control of the education fund. He must explain why it was not ever disbursed? Is it because it was set up in such a way that its trustees could not have access to the cash, as in the deposit taking co-operatives, and therefore confined to oblivion? And this at a time when the Chinese community faced a political crisis when education became market-oriented, and beyond the reach of Malaysians, Chinese included. That the board of trustees, which include Dr Ling, is ordered to return the money is proof enough of its culpability.

The MCA lost its raison d'etre with the Chinese community then, one which led to then deputy prime minister, the late Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, to characterise it as neither dead nor alive. Its miscalculations -- reminiscent of its present miscalculations after the 1999 general elections when it wanted to have its candidate nominated as chief minister of Penang, when none of the others wanted it to -- in which Tan Sri Lee played a prominent part, led to MCA's political irrelevance in the larger National Front setup, especially when the then opposition Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia formed the state government in Penang after the 1969 general elections, and the MCA Young Turks moved to it, and became the alternate Chinese voice in the cabinet. It accepted the MCA's declining support within the Chinese community, one Tan Sri Lee's election win in Seremban could not reverse in 1982. As it is, that election proved nothing but that when required the MCA could muster cash and people to win an election it must win. Nothing changed. If the current MCA president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, were to try a stunt like that, it would only prove something Malaysians had known for three decades: that the MCA, by allowing itself to be an appendage of an UMNO worldview in the National Front, is there as Chinese representatives because UMNO wants it to. Dr Ling himself remains MCA president because UMNO wants him to.

THE PRIME MINISTER'S weekend meeting (16 September 00) with the Chinese organisations' elections committee, Suqui, removed the tattered figleaf of the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and the Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia (Gerakan) negotiating Chinese issues and demands as part of its political compact with UMNO. It undermined the MCA's and the Gerakan's standing within the community, with the clear signal to Chinese organisations that the two parties, which UMNO insists represents them, can be safely sidelined. The MCA president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, was not allowed to resign from the cabinet when he wanted to after a political quarrel with his party officials because the Prime Minister would not let him. The Gerakan president, Dato' Seri Lim Kheng Yaik, cannot decide if his party is fish or fowl, its sole political activity, in the eyes of the Chinese community, to retain power in Penang by not allowing the MCA to unseat it: when more basic problems trouble its members, it believes it can best be resolved by a firm commitment to Information Technology! The leaden leadership, in which personal pique represents policy, is now confirmed in the Suqui controversy.

But the incident clearly had racial overtones. All the attackers were from one race and all the victims from another. To not put a fine point to this, the attackers were Malay youths and the victims all Chinese. Could that have been a coincidence? When political leaders raise the ante, as UMNO and National Front leader have the past month, something must give. The aggressive threats from UMNO Youth at what it perceives to be Chinse intrasigience would normally have had the desired effect of the Chinese withdrawing. That had been so in the past. This time however, it backfired. The Chinese role in returning the National Front to power gave the MCA ideas that it could extract concessions from a weakened UMNO, like its Chinese as chief minister of Penang. UMNO hit back, and what we see now is a continuation of that inbuilt anger. Curiously, the MCA is quiet about what happened in Malacca. It cannot raise a whimper. It is already neutered with its president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, who wanted to resign as transport minister after intrusive party questioning, forced to remain at the UMNO president's insistence. It is in this larger political powerplay in the National Front that the Malacca incident must be viewed.

The Malaysian government until recently insisted the public should have no role in the formulation of policy unless it is to support it. The opposition political parties are irrelevant since they are not the government. The views of any but the National Front should be ignored because it has the people's support. So, the new capital of Putra Jaya is built without discussion, burdening the country with billions of ringgit in wasteful and irrelevant construction cost. The privatisied highway is thrown at the people to take it or leave it; that if they left it, no further highways would be built; that tolls would be raised with indecent haste and intervals because it was more important for crony business men to make money than the people's ability to pay for it. Important laws are disallowed an opportunity for serious discussion. The public need not know about all that. After all, it was they elected the government; would the government dare do anything against their interest? Of course not, says that eminent pillar of the administration, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu as he seeks more creative ways to raise tolls; of course not, says Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik as he seeks more creative ways to raise the Prime Minister on a pedestal. The government provides government funds running into millions of ringgit every year for government members of parliament; why should such facilities be given to the enemies of the people that are the in the opposition?

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