Ong Vs Chua: who will win?
By Sim Kwang Yang
chua-and-ong-2
The war between MCA President Ong Tee Kiat and his Deputy Chua Soi Lek is now the hottest news in mainstream Chinese newspapers like Sin Chew Jit Poh and Nanyang Siang Pao, and on net news portals like Malaysiakini, Merdeka Review, Fung Yin Times, and the Chinese version of Malaysian Mirror.
Numerous Chinese bloggers from both sides of the conflict have also been engaged in a war of words.
As an outsider and a bystander who is never too fond of MCA brand of politics, I watch this much ado about MCA internal power struggle with great amusement. But as a commentator of current events in Malaysia, I feel obliged to make some sense of the present MCA crisis in the context of our evolving Malaysian political culture.
The first thing that comes to mind is that Chinese politicians like to quarrel among themselves, even within their own political party.
For the life of me, I still cannot understand fully why the different factions within SUPP should quarrel so much over the formation of the Dudong Branch in Sibu. Perhaps, they do not realise they are on the brink of being decimated by the DAP in Sarawak.
From the early days of their political life, MCA has never really been free of internal fights. The losers like Lim Chong Yu and Lim Keng Aik would just leave MCA to join Gerakan. I have lost count of the number of times this premier old party has been torn apart by internal factional fights.
This time, the fuse has been lit by the expulsion of Chua from the party by the presidential council which accepted the recommendation of the party disciplinary committee on the ground that his sex scandal has caused the party image to be tainted.
I should think so. A person who has been so tainted in his personal life should have retired from politics. But then his supporters argued that he has been exonerated by the party when he was elected to be the party Deputy President. That may be so, but it does not mean that the Malaysian Chinese voters had exonerated him yet.
After his sacking, the mainstream and alternative media is crazy with all kinds of speculations on what will happen next. They are full of inside information from unnamed sources on what Chua supporters would do in the immediate future.
pix_toprightApparently, there is a plan by Chua’s supporters to get the signatures of some 800 party delegates to petition for an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM). The agenda of the EGM remains uncertain. They will probably move to restore the party membership and the post of Deputy President to Chua since a simple majority will suffice. To remove Ong as party President would require a two-third majority, a virtual impossibility.
Then Ong Tee Kiat announced on August 30 a pre-emptive strike by ordering an EGM of his own within 30 days to endorse the presidential council decision to sack Chua.
So we are now confronted with the very real possibility of watching two EGMs for MCA. The last time this happened was in 1984 in the war between Tan Khoon Swan and Neo Yee Pan. That one too started with Neo, MCA President then, sacking Tan, the Vice President for the latter’s accusation of phantom delegates and phantom members.
Those couple of EGMs ended with Neo’s defeat. Tan’s victory was short lived, as he was jailed in a Singapore prison after being MCA President for 11 months. That was the start of the Lim Liong Sik era, which lasted from 1986 until the ascension of Ong Tee Kiat in recent months.
That MCA crisis hurt MCA badly. In the 1986 general election, the DAP won an unprecedented 24 parliamentary seats, with MCA winning only 17 seats.
This time around, I think Khoo Kay Peng is right in his analysis that the Ong-Chua fight is a fight between the new MCA and the old MCA.
I believe Ong has seen the writing on the war. Unless MCA goes through a drastic reform and a rebranding, the party will perish in the next general election. The results of the 7 by elections in West Malaysia are for all to see. That he partly why he has decided to let all the hair hang out in the PKFZ scandal.
Chua Soi Lek Sex ScandalIn an old and established party like the MCA, anyone wanting to reform the party will be resisted and sabotaged by the entrenched warlords who have a great deal of personal vested interest in maintaining the status quo. They are not going to sit idly by to see Ong rock their treasure boat. Chua, after all, has always been with Ling Liong Sik, whose residual influence in MCA would not take Ong’s gauntlet lying down.
Who will win in the end? I predict Ong will emerge the final winner. He controls the party machinery and resources. So far, his central executive members have been quite solid behind him. In contrast, Chua’s open supporters seem to belong to the over-the-hill gang. His alleged national coordinator is Tan Chai Ho.
That also depends on whether UMNO will weigh in at the critical moment. UMNO has been known to do so in the past, and after the MCA crisis is over, MCA would be weaker in relation to UMNO. We will see.
What is certain is this: MCA has long practised this unwritten rule of winner-takes-all in their party crisis. Whoever wins in the current crisis, the winners will exile the losers to the margin of power within the MCA. MCA would be weakened, and the DAP and PKR would be laughing all the way to the next general election.
I have never liked the MCA brand of Chinese politics. If they do disappear in Malaysian political scene, is that such a bad thing after all, even for the Chinese in Malaysia?
It would make the so-called “social contract” and the formula for racial power-sharing between the components of the Alliance then and the BN later disappear also.
Perhaps then, The Chinese voters in this country will be liberated from the bondage of politics of race. Then, we can start to think of building the real 1Malaysia!
(SKY can be reached at kenyalang578@hotmail.com )
chua-and-ong-2
The war between MCA President Ong Tee Kiat and his Deputy Chua Soi Lek is now the hottest news in mainstream Chinese newspapers like Sin Chew Jit Poh and Nanyang Siang Pao, and on net news portals like Malaysiakini, Merdeka Review, Fung Yin Times, and the Chinese version of Malaysian Mirror.
Numerous Chinese bloggers from both sides of the conflict have also been engaged in a war of words.
As an outsider and a bystander who is never too fond of MCA brand of politics, I watch this much ado about MCA internal power struggle with great amusement. But as a commentator of current events in Malaysia, I feel obliged to make some sense of the present MCA crisis in the context of our evolving Malaysian political culture.
The first thing that comes to mind is that Chinese politicians like to quarrel among themselves, even within their own political party.
For the life of me, I still cannot understand fully why the different factions within SUPP should quarrel so much over the formation of the Dudong Branch in Sibu. Perhaps, they do not realise they are on the brink of being decimated by the DAP in Sarawak.
From the early days of their political life, MCA has never really been free of internal fights. The losers like Lim Chong Yu and Lim Keng Aik would just leave MCA to join Gerakan. I have lost count of the number of times this premier old party has been torn apart by internal factional fights.
This time, the fuse has been lit by the expulsion of Chua from the party by the presidential council which accepted the recommendation of the party disciplinary committee on the ground that his sex scandal has caused the party image to be tainted.
I should think so. A person who has been so tainted in his personal life should have retired from politics. But then his supporters argued that he has been exonerated by the party when he was elected to be the party Deputy President. That may be so, but it does not mean that the Malaysian Chinese voters had exonerated him yet.
After his sacking, the mainstream and alternative media is crazy with all kinds of speculations on what will happen next. They are full of inside information from unnamed sources on what Chua supporters would do in the immediate future.
pix_toprightApparently, there is a plan by Chua’s supporters to get the signatures of some 800 party delegates to petition for an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM). The agenda of the EGM remains uncertain. They will probably move to restore the party membership and the post of Deputy President to Chua since a simple majority will suffice. To remove Ong as party President would require a two-third majority, a virtual impossibility.
Then Ong Tee Kiat announced on August 30 a pre-emptive strike by ordering an EGM of his own within 30 days to endorse the presidential council decision to sack Chua.
So we are now confronted with the very real possibility of watching two EGMs for MCA. The last time this happened was in 1984 in the war between Tan Khoon Swan and Neo Yee Pan. That one too started with Neo, MCA President then, sacking Tan, the Vice President for the latter’s accusation of phantom delegates and phantom members.
Those couple of EGMs ended with Neo’s defeat. Tan’s victory was short lived, as he was jailed in a Singapore prison after being MCA President for 11 months. That was the start of the Lim Liong Sik era, which lasted from 1986 until the ascension of Ong Tee Kiat in recent months.
That MCA crisis hurt MCA badly. In the 1986 general election, the DAP won an unprecedented 24 parliamentary seats, with MCA winning only 17 seats.
This time around, I think Khoo Kay Peng is right in his analysis that the Ong-Chua fight is a fight between the new MCA and the old MCA.
I believe Ong has seen the writing on the war. Unless MCA goes through a drastic reform and a rebranding, the party will perish in the next general election. The results of the 7 by elections in West Malaysia are for all to see. That he partly why he has decided to let all the hair hang out in the PKFZ scandal.
Chua Soi Lek Sex ScandalIn an old and established party like the MCA, anyone wanting to reform the party will be resisted and sabotaged by the entrenched warlords who have a great deal of personal vested interest in maintaining the status quo. They are not going to sit idly by to see Ong rock their treasure boat. Chua, after all, has always been with Ling Liong Sik, whose residual influence in MCA would not take Ong’s gauntlet lying down.
Who will win in the end? I predict Ong will emerge the final winner. He controls the party machinery and resources. So far, his central executive members have been quite solid behind him. In contrast, Chua’s open supporters seem to belong to the over-the-hill gang. His alleged national coordinator is Tan Chai Ho.
That also depends on whether UMNO will weigh in at the critical moment. UMNO has been known to do so in the past, and after the MCA crisis is over, MCA would be weaker in relation to UMNO. We will see.
What is certain is this: MCA has long practised this unwritten rule of winner-takes-all in their party crisis. Whoever wins in the current crisis, the winners will exile the losers to the margin of power within the MCA. MCA would be weakened, and the DAP and PKR would be laughing all the way to the next general election.
I have never liked the MCA brand of Chinese politics. If they do disappear in Malaysian political scene, is that such a bad thing after all, even for the Chinese in Malaysia?
It would make the so-called “social contract” and the formula for racial power-sharing between the components of the Alliance then and the BN later disappear also.
Perhaps then, The Chinese voters in this country will be liberated from the bondage of politics of race. Then, we can start to think of building the real 1Malaysia!
(SKY can be reached at kenyalang578@hotmail.com )
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