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The blind leads the deaf in the MCA crisis

The MCA deputy president, Dato' Seri Lim Ah Lek, denies UMNO runs MCA, so he told Mingguan Malaysia yesterday (21 April 02). The MCA president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, is confident, he could chart the independent course he could not before UMNO moved in. The UMNO president decided MCA could not manage its affairs, deputed his deputy president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, to provide a temporary backbone for MCA so it would present a united front in the next general elections, possibly next year. But Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed does not know what he wants of the MCA, though he did read the Riot Act to both the Ling and Lim factions. First he wanted the MCA divisional elections and the Extraordinary general meeting suspended. Then he wanted the MCA divisional elections to go on but not the EGM. The Abdullah Badawi committee cannot decide. And all three await the return of Dr Mahathir in suspense, agony and trepidation.

In other words, Dr Mahathir blows hot and cold, uncertain if he wants Dr Ling or Dato' Seri Lim as the next MCA president. The Lim faction grumbles at Dr Mahathir's ambivalence. It unequivocally called off its EGM, scheduled for yesterday. But the Ling faction took it as a sign of divine blessing, would not call off the divisional elections now under way. The longer the leadership crisis in MCA exists, the more intense and damaging the infighting. When Dr Mahathir returns, he would have to address this. The Badawi committee did not have what it must to resolve the crisis in his absence. Two of its three Chinese members are business men cronies loyal to the Prime minister, and the other is his non-Chinese speaking political secretary so well known in the Chinese community that none of the Chinese newspapers could agree on how to write his name that each wrote it differently. In other words, neither the Ling nor the Lim factions could relate to it but had to.

So, the blind leads the deaf. The factions are far apart as ever. But are united in treating the Badawi committee with contempt. When Dr Mahathir set it up, it was not to resolve the crisis, but to ensure it would not blow up in his absence. But it has. Nothing can move until he returns today. It makes nonsense of Dato' Seri Lim's claim. All it promises is the MCA's continuing irrelevance. MCA's biggest crisis over the years is who should lead, not what it can do for the community it normally represents in the cabinet. If it had adopted rules that made for an orderly succession, it at least would have had the respect of the Chinese community. For the past two years, the only issue in the MCA is who should be the next president. When the two factions closed ranks in the two byelections -- in Indera Kayangan and Ketari -- it was Dr Mahathir who forced them to. But this temporary patching is not a permanent solution.

There is but one way acceptable to all: let the political infighting spill over, however catharctic it might be to the MCA, but it would end, once and for all, this near irrevocable split. But neither wants to confront the other in an election. Dr Ling believes he should be allowed to continue however irrelevant he is inoffice. Dato' Seri Lim wants him out, but is not prepared to meet him headlong in an election. This is the problem in MCA, and National Front (BN) ranks. So, the infighting is so deadly that the new leader cannot be elected without splitting the party. Only once, in the MCA's history, has a president been defeated in an election: when Dr (now Tun) Lim Chong Eu defeated Tun Tan Cheng Lock in 1958. He was so independent that the then UMNO president (and prime minister), Tengku Abdul Rahman, forced him out of office when he made demands for more MCA candidates in the 1959 general elections. Only one MCA president left office voluntarily: Dato' Cheah Toon Lock, when he stepped in in the interim after Tun Tan Siew Sin was forced out in 1974. So, in every MCA election, UMNO it is that pushes for a compromise. And reduces it to irrelevance when the time for a new president comes.

UMNO does what it must. It cannot afford a hyperactive non-Malay coalition partner. And did what it could to make their leaders as ineffective as it could. These parties had their own, largly fair, system of electing their leaders, but it was revised to ape the UMNO system. The UMNO system works because the ground is as interested in seeing the leaders they want -- though even that is under strain in UMNO during the two-decade-long leadership of Dr Mahathir -- but it would not translate well into any other cultures. It did not. It shows. The presidents stay on for as long as they like, their home ground receding from them with each re-election. The UMNO president knows his time is up when the ground rebels. It is not so now. Dr Mahathir to remain in office for as long as he wants adopts the tactics of his coalition partner presidents to ignore the ground. And pays the price. As the non-coalition partners continue to. It does not matter who is the new MCA president. Whoever it is, he is beholden to the UMNO president. Dr Mahathir could not demand of Dr Ling and Dato' Seri Lim what he would in happier times because his own position as UMNO president is under attack.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my