MGG Pillai Commentary View

<< Previous || Next >>

CHIAROSCURO: Gun Fight At the MCA Corral

I contributed this for my column, Chiaroscuro, in malaysiakini (http://www.malaysiakini.com), which appeared on 27 February 01.

-------------------

27 February 01

malaysiakini

CHIAROSCURO

MGG Pillai

Gun Fight At The MCA Corral

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.

But the crisis comes amidst the Chinese community's convulsions about its future. The Chinese cultural ground deserts the MCA as surely as the Malay UMNO. Ling is as isolated as a Chinese leader and Dr Mahathir the Malay. But while Dr Mahathir has options left to heal the breach, Ling has none.

The issue, as in every MCA crisis since 1969, is how and when the new MCA leader should emerge. Whoever is MCA president demands and expects absolute loyalty, and is armed with enough powers to remove any who disagrees. This is how he entrenches his control over the party. So, when the members are fed up of his presidency, he can only be removed by an internal revolt from his cabal.

That was how Tan Cheng Lock was forced out by Lim Chong Eu who was outsmarted by Tan's son, Tan Siew Sin. His successor, Lee San Choon, took office in a crisis which dismissed several young party leaders demanding change. Neo Yee Pan forced Lee San Choon out, only to be given the coup de grace a few years later by Tan Koon Swan. Ling Liong Sik booted out Tan Koon Swan and is now waiting to be by Lim Ah Lek.

The MCA, it seems, exists so that its leaders hold cabinet and state executive positions in the federal and state governments, and sinecures throughout the country. The community it purports to represent moves away decidedly and deliberately; its cultural leaders have found other dependable leaders, causing an inevitable clash between the two contradictory forces of culture and politics.

When political and cultural leaders work in harmony, the community benefits. But when political leaders decide that their best bet is to be in government, for their own benefit and to bestow largesse to its members, the battle is lost. Again, that happens not only in MCA, the other parties in government and opposition are caught in the same maelstrom.

The power struggle in the MCA turned into a witch hunt. Ling miscalculated Lee's support. Lee is a reluctant politician, reluctantly brought to centre stage and remaining in politics long after he had wanted to retire to his business.

An urbane scion of a Kapitan Cina family from Pahang, he had a healthy distrust in the political process that kept him sane and above the fray. He is not one to run away from responsibility, but he is not one to keep quiet when those above him abuse their position.

So, the two friends became bitter political enemies. Like in UMNO and MIC, the MCA president demands total control of the party and expect total devotion. That works only so long as he is adulated as a leader. When the aura of that leadership disappears, he can stonewall it awhile, as Ling did, but cracks in that superficial facade of support would come soon enough. As it now has.

Lim eschews ambition to be MCA president. He wants a more equitable running of the party. Ling does not want that, preferring to surround himself with cronies and acolytes. The longer he is in office, the more definitively he is out of touch with the ground. And the more determinedly he clings to the coattails of the UMNO president.

When Ling last year said he would resign from the cabinet in the first publicised clash between him and Lee, he withdrew it because the UMNO president and prime minister forbade him to. That effectively made him a lame duck. He could pretend nothing happened, but his days were numbered.

He ordered a news blackout. He got states loyal to him to come out in enthusiastic support. But then, so did Lim. The battle lines are drawn. The search for scapegoats began. But the blackout could not hold.

Meanwhile, the MCA alienated the cultural ground even further, mishandling the Suqui demands, the Vision school project, the Chinese school issue in Damansara. And shot itself in the foot to demand, after the November 1999 general election and against UMNO's wishes, that the chief minister be from the MCA.

Ling and Lim met to defuse the crisis. They could not. The rot has set in. If Ling wins this round, he cannot return to square one. It would be but a pyrrhic victory. He must now step down. Or ensure even more travails for the MCA.

The bigger question is where MCA heads to now. The party faces what one analyst calls "advanced internal decay". What makes it all but terminal is that it happens when the other parties in the National Front face similar problems.

What happens in the MCA mirrors what happens in UMNO. The gridlock in MCA is not as serious in UMNO, but that is no small comfort. The MCA gridlock will bring it down, no matter what happens to UMNO.

The big yawn in the Chinese community becomes infectious. It does not care what happens to MCA. The indifference does not help Ling and his supporters. But the same indifference is noticeable in the other two Chinese-based parties, its National Front partner, Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia, and the Democratic Action Party in the opposition.

Lim sees this more clearly than the rest. But if whoever succeeds Ling does not drastically prune the president's powers and wean the Chinese cultural ground to its fold, it would not even have the option of sitting on the opposition benches of parliament and the state assemblies. For that, they must first be a political party with support from the community it is believed to represent.

Ends