Stanley Koh
freemalaysiatoday
March 12, 2011
The MCA president’s recent utterances make us suspect that he has lost both his cool and honesty.
The latest controversy surrounding MCA president Dr Chua Soi Lek should explain why more and more people are finding it easier to believe in comedians than in politicians.
Chua’s recent “4-letter word” rampage on Twitter.com has quickly become famous. The offensive tweets to his critics – as well as his response to critics of the tweets – speak of a politician who has lost both his cool and his honesty.
In a 2008 press interview, he was asked whether he was misled into publicly apologising for appearing in a sex video.
“I maintain an active public life, continue to receive invitations and nobody talks about it anymore,” he said.
“There is a Chinese magazine which went to do a survey and found that most of the people find it a very private affair.”
The reply implied that he believed the public had forgiven him. He might have been right. Unfortunately, though, many have refused to forget his indiscretion.
In the same interview, he was asked to rate himself as a politician.
His response: “The public is a better judge. I do my work, I call a spade a spade and that offends a lot of people. That’s why some say I am a lousy politician.”
Why has he now retaliated against critics of his tweets in a manner that is so contradictory to the stance he took in 2008? Is it because he is now the MCA president?
Why would he refuse to admit to the hidden vulgarity of his messages?
Does he think the public is stupid?
Instead, he has accused opposition politicians of overplaying the issue, preposterously suggesting they were taking revenge for losing in recent by-elections.
Or is Chua so sure that Chinese voters are returning to support his party that he thinks it does not matter how arrogant he appears in the public eye?
The truth is that while the Twitter episode is the talk of the cyber circuit, MCA itself is virtually invisible to the public radar. Many have already written it off as a political party.
Significant event
Nobody bothers or even knows about MCA events, such as tomorrow’s extraordinary general meeting, which is in fact a significant event. It is to debate whether to amend the party constitution to allow for postponement of internal elections.
A high-level party official said Chua would prefer that the elections go ahead considering that Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak might call for a general election within these two years. Chua wants a clear mandate to lead his party into the general election.
Yet, some party insiders contend that his political survival is synonymous with his ability to draw back the Chinese votes for the Barisan Nasional (BN).
Will he able to pull back those votes at the next general election? Will he be able to make the improbable probable, the way he made his political comeback by being elected party president despite a sex scandal?
His ability to project his non-involvement in 2008’s “MCA Snoop Squad” affair and the “Save MCA” campaign spoke much about his capabilities in political manoeuvring.
In 2008, when asked to comment on the MCA’s internal politics, he said:
“There must be room for consensus and freedom to be critical. Something is wrong when everybody sings the same tune.”
In 2009, in a party campaign against his expulsion, he said: “I support my plan to bring back integrity and I want to come back as an ordinary MCA member. I want to retire as a MCA member.”
Chua succeeded in returning into the party’s fold, not as an ordinary member but as party president, in 2010. He beat a former president, Ong Ka Ting, and incumbent Ong Tee Keat.
What he has failed to bring back is that elusive “integrity”.
Political survival
Some pundits believe that Chua’s political survival hinges on his ability to help BN regain its two-thirds majority in Parliament.
The recent BN claim that it has managed to draw back Malay and Indian votes, if true, is a breather to Chua because it means that his party stands a good chance of winning many mixed electoral seats that it will contest.
The dip in popularity of PKR (because of controversial internal elections) and PAS (over the lottery ban) has also boosted the fighting morale within MCA.
What is worrying are the Chinese-majority and urban seats to be contested against the DAP.
Can MCA overcome uncertainties about its electoral future by winning more of the popular votes? In 2008, it captured only 84,0489 popular votes. That was shameful, considering that it had more than one million members. Since then, it has registered thousands of new members. We will have to wait to see whether the larger membership will translate into a bigger share of popular votes.
Allegations are flying around in cyberspace that in recent by-elections, MCA blatantly bought votes and that the so-called 1Malaysia NGO that distributed goodies during the campaigns is associated with the party.
Not too long ago, when asked to comment on MCA’s political strength, Chua said the party could be looked at as having two domains – the structural domain and the personality domain.
“Structurally,” he said, “the party is good and very strong in networking.”
The trouble is in the “personality” sphere. A long-standing problem with the party is the public perception that its leaders lack integrity and credibility. Chua’s recent 4-letter outbursts and the dragging to court of former party president Dr Ling Liong Sik and former transport minister Chan Kong Choy over the PKFZ scandal will not help much in erasing this prejudice.
Within the party, potential challengers against Chua and his key supporters are just biding their time. Who knows, something might happen, and then it will be time again to “cleanse” the party of “tainted” leaders.
Chua has more than once spoken of “divine help”. Will he be needing it again?
The answers to some of our questions may or may not unfold in the near or distant future. For now we are certain of only one thing – that whatever MCA pledges to do, it will continue to be subservient to Umno. At the same time, as long as MCA does not have credible support from the Chinese, it will be a parasite on Umno.
Stankey Koh is the former head of MCA’s research unit.
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