MCA's lack of political viagra and Perkasa's overdose of steroids.

Two important events took place over the weekend. MCA held its General Assembly, met and elected a new president and deputy president. Liow Tiong Lai emerged victorious with a 51% support from his party members. He and his crafty deputy will quickly move to line up the remaining seats of the MCA central committee with their people.

Liow would fit in nicely with UMNO’s version of what it wants for MCA leadership. He is malleable. I have always suspected Wee Ka Siong to be a wily operator- he has a track record of edging others to fight first, tire each other out and sort of prepare the ground for his eventual appearance. This time around, his borrowed knife has set aside Soi Lek’s proxy. Liow will face a more formidable opponent in Wee Ka Siong next time around.

When PM Najib officiated the MCA Meet, he advised MCA to take in political Viagra. Where is MCA found wanting? Najib knows MCA hasn’t got the capacity to mobilise Chinese support for the BN. liow represents 51% of the 2300 MCA delegates at the assembly, not the Chinese voters out there.

It wasn’t Liow who sprang to his feet to respond to Najib’s Viagra reference but the wily coyote Wee. Here is a fellow in whom UMNO will find it difficult to control- he has shown an early stubbornness and an indication that he is willing to take a different stand. Liow on the other hand, has missed an early chance to make an impression thus affirming the perception created by the previous MCA president that LIow is indeed a weak leader.

While Ka Siong’s bravado may have earned him points, that can also be his undoing. UMMO will take steps to contain Wee.

But what about the political Viagra reference? No capacity to get it up? Seems to me, the PM has been boxed in by sexual references. When defending the increase in sugar price, he said too much sugar affects the male libido. He’s now at it again. Perhaps he was mindful of the sexual prowess of the previous MCA president and wishes MCA as a political party has that kind of vigour.

The political Viagra comparison is to tell MCA that to UMNO, it’s a wimp suffering from political erectile dysfunction. MCA won only 7 parliamentary seats having lost a further 8 seats from its previous position and has 11 state seats earning it the moniker the 7-Eleven party. Effectively, MCA has been replaced by DAP as the preferred voice of the Chinese. UMNO wants MCA to be robust in the context of shoring up Chinese political allegiance. If this message is lost on Ka Siong who seems to be reading the Viagra reference as an opportunity simply to assert that MCA is a political equal or that he is nobody’s poodle, he is misdirecting his macho-ness. UMNO doesn’t want a strong and assertive MCA leader- it wants a strong MCA to capture Chinese vote.

The second event was the PERKASA general Assembly. Unlike Liow, the leader of Perkasa, Ibrahim Ali, is a mini version of UMNO on steroids. Mini because it has 500,000 members to UMNO’s 3.4 mllion. This time around, Ibrahim Ali says will keep a KPI on Najib’s and Muhydin’s performance, eliciting a sarcastic response from UMNO’s information chief that it’s UMNO which is calling the shots, not Perkasa. Perkasa and UMNO must be having a love-hate relationship; In the recent UMNO general assembly, UMNO’s deputy president MUhyidin Yassin mentioned his gratitude to Perkasa and many other UMNO leaders have expressed filial feelings of Perkasa. Yet, we did not see any current UMNO leaders of note at the Perkasa Assembly. UMNO needs the support of Perkasa but doesn’t want to be seen in Perkasa’s company.

But that isn’t the point I want to expand. At the MCA General Assembly- one delegate stated that in the 2004 General Elections, when Chinese support was responsible for BN’s overwhelming victory, MCA didn’t ask what more do the Malays want?  Good for the ears of the 2300 delegates, but prejudicial to Chinese politics. The tit-for-tat rhetorical question, leads MCA to play the very game UMNO wants MCA to be in- having to grandstand an issue created and embellished by UMNO supremacists. Should MCA respond the way UMNO wants it to( as it did through this delegate)- that kind of rhetorical question will allow the UMNO extremists to project an image of a Chinese horde and the party responsible for creating this mess is MCA.  The Pragmatic Chinese don’t need that kind of image.

So to the Chinese out there, MCA isn’t a party for you to invest your interests in. abandon them!

The lame return shot has allowed Ibrahim Ali to answer: the Malays demand:-

·         The Chinese not to besiege the Malays

·         Not to question Malay privileges

·         Not to question the position of Malay rulers

·         Not to question preferential economic and business policies

And so on and so forth.

Sew how stupid for the MCA to play the game on the terms UMNO supremacists want them to?

I will respond to Ibrahim Ali in the next article.