Archive for category MCA
MCA ’s three-ring circus rolls around
By Kee Thuan Chye
Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat just doesn’t know when to quit, does he? Despite his bravado in promising to step down before the mess hit the fan at the MCA’s extraordinary general meeting last Oct 10, he is still adamant that he will be an asset to a beleaguered party split apart by his high-handedness as president. He has declared — the first candidate to do so — that he will defend his position at the coming party elections on March 28.
This is the very man who promised to quit as president if the no-confidence vote against him at the EGM was passed by just one vote. It was actually passed by a margin of 14, with 1,155 delegates voting for it and 1,141 against. He should have kept his word, and done the honourable thing; instead, he chose to stay on.
That more than 600 members attended the party’s annual meeting on March 7 indicates that he enjoys their support, but that is only a quarter of the 2,379 delegates who will vote in two weeks. Besides, some of those 600 could have attended the AGM just to hedge their bets; there may be opportunists among them who will switch loyalties if another faction looks the surer winner. Furthermore, the political complexion has just changed, now that former president Tan Sri Ong Ka Ting has also announced his candidacy.
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Four MCA Ministers and seven deputy ministers should take collective official leave for next fortnight to concentrate on their party tussle in the run-up to the fresh MCA party elections on March 28
Yesterday, the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak called for a solution to the MCA crisis so that the party can emerge as a credible force to represent the Chinese community and country.
MCA has become a pale shadow from the days of its founding fathers led by Tun Tan Cheng Lock more than half a century ago, when MCA could be said to be on an equal footing with Umno in the Alliance.
Today, MCA has been reduced to such a pathetic status that despite having four Ministers and seven Deputy Ministers, MCA does not even have the weight and leverage in the Barisan Nasional of an outsider and Johnny-come-lately organization like Perkasa and Ibrahim Ali!
When Umno proposed at the Barisan Nasional Supreme Council meeting last month to scrap the rule of unanimity and to amend the BN constitution to allow direct membership of NGOs, individuals and other political parties, MCA leaders dare not even object although they know that their status in Barisan Nasional will be reduced to that of Ibrahim Ali or even lower, whether Perkasa is eventually admitted into the BN or not.
The “Three Kingdoms” battle in MCA has nothing to do with the rights. Interests and future whether of the Chinese community or the Malaysian nation but the political stakes of the different MCA factions.
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MCA’s harakiri and its repercussions on the Chinese
MCA is an ineffective political force in part because it has long played only a marginal role in the previous Malaysia Plans — implemented by the Umno-aligned, Malay dominated civil service — that have shaped socio-economic development in the country.
The Malaysian public, especially the Chinese, must be wondering if MCA can ever get its house in order so that it can attend to the important affairs of state, especially the economy.
Besides the economy which affects the wellbeing of all households in one way or another, there are many other issues that should occupy the time and attention of the party.
Rising religious tensions; increasing intolerance of Islamic zealots; growth of rightwing Malay NGOs and extremism; lack of education opportunities for young Chinese and other Malaysians – the list is formidable. Many of these issues have implications not only for the Chinese but for the whole country.
The Najib administration’s New Economic Model (NEM) is being touted as the way forward. Do the MCA leaders know or even care what is in the model?
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MCA dignity and humiliation plumbing new historic lows
Most pitiable and tragic to see MCA dignity and humiliation plumbing new historic lows in its 61-year history in the past 24 hours.
Whether the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak will attend the 56th MCA Annual General Meeting scheduled for Sunday became the most strategic gambit in the MCA “Three Kingdom” power tussle when the Ong remnants in the rump MCA Central Committee after the resignation of two-thirds of its membership from the Chua and Liow factions insisted on proceeding with Sunday’s MCA AGM.
The spokesman for the “Ong” MCA faction announced after the rump MCA Central Committee meeting last evening that Najib would attend which was contradicted soon after by spokesmen from the “Liow” and “Chua” MCA factions that Najib would not attend!
As if it is not shameful and humiliating enough that Sunday’s 56th MCA AGM is being aborted in less than 72 hours of its scheduled meeting by directive and pressure from outside the MCA!
It would be understandable if the MCA “Three Kingdom” power tussle is over which faction could better champion the proclaimed objectives of the party or the proper implementation of announced government programmes like Najib’s 1Malaysia concept.
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First time in 56-year MCA history – fresh party leadership elections decided by external remote control
Who was the mastermind of the decision yesterday to halt the 56th MCA Annual General Meeting to be held in less than 72 hours on Sunday, 7th March 2010?
Not MCA President Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat though he subsequently claimed that he was the first to call for fresh party polls.
His first comment that his supporters had “expected this long-anticipated development” is the most eloquent admission that he was completely taken by surprise by Chua’s announcement – which was why the Bernama report of Chua’s shock announcement was preceded less than two hours earlier by Ong’s special interview as MCA President on the occasion of Sunday’s 56th MCA AGM, which is as good as spiked!
Not the second MCA Three-Kingdom challenger, MCA Vice Chairman Liow Tiong Lai – though the Liow faction must be very relieved that finally MCA party leadership elections are being held.
If not Ong and Liow, was Chua the mastermind of the move?
Nobody believes that Chua would dare, or to use the Chinese description “have the leopard’s bile”, to abort the 56th MCA AGM to be officially opened by the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak in less than 72 hours without any “green light” from above.
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MCA Ministers and leaders are the “politically walking-dead” in Malaysia
Surprise of surprises that there is a MCA Minister and leader who could bestir from their political comatose stage to notice current developments around them.
The MCA paper The Star today reported the MCA vice president Datuk Seri Kong Cho Ha as commenting that “the ‘internal bleeding’ of Pakatan Rakyat is just the beginning of a more serious problem for the pact” and that “Normally, in medical terms, if there’s haemorrhaging in the brain, it will lead to a stroke”.
Thanks Kong for the concern, which must have been quite an exertion from a denizen of the “politically walking-dead” in Malaysia – the MCA Ministers and leaders.
Malaysians have ceased to ask why MCA Ministers have failed to pull their weight in Cabinet, as it is generally recognized that the “politically walking-dead” can have zero weight or input in serious matters of state – which is why MCA Ministers have nothing to say in Cabinet about national issues whether 1Malaysia, NEP, braindrain, corruption, galloping crime or recent issues as in getting the Cabinet to direct the Home Ministry to withdraw its appeal against the Kuala Lumpur High Court judgment of Datuk Lau Bee Lan allowing the Catholic weekly Herald to use the word “Allah” in the Bahasa Malaysia edition and to convene an inter-religious conference to resolve the “Allah” controversy; the exclusion of Chinese and Tamil primary schools in the selection of the first list of 20 high-performance schools or the Jakim insubordination and insurrection in organsing a forum for 800 civil servants last Thursday which openly defied the 1Malaysia concept.
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Walk the talk, Tee Keat!
COMMENT
By Thomas Lee
tomlee48@gmail.com
Monday 1 January 2010
MCA president Ong Tee Keat has made a bold declaration in his New Year message that he would be ready to lead the party to stand up to injustice, and engage any other like-minded forces to seek redress on issues of public concern.
“We have to be bold and we have to be loud if and when we have to. We need to transform and energise the MCA that will be fearless in championing equal opportunities and a level playing field, not only for the Chinese community, but for all Malaysians,” Tee Keat said in his message.
Brave words, indeed, but can Tee Keat really fulfill such a tall order he has set for himself and the MCA? Read the rest of this entry »
The myth of the indispensable hero Tee Keat
By Thomas Lee
The PKFZ issue has been branded about by certain people as the reason Ong Tee Keat should remain the MCA president and transport minister. These people seem to think that if Tee Keat is not holding these positions the probe into the multi-billion ringgit PKFZ scandal will grind to a stop.
Such thinking is simply simplistic and utterly uncanny, especially when many of those arguing in support of Tee Keat are supposed to be educated and intelligent people, some of them being leaders in political parties and non-governmental organisations.
Such people should know and understand that the PKFZ buck does not stop at the desk of Tee Keat but at the table of Umno boss and Prime Minister Najib Razak. The ultimate decision on what to do with PKFZ issue is not in the hand of Tee Keat but that of Najib. It doesn’t matter who the transport minister is as it is the prime minister who will finally call the shot and make the decision. The transport minister is merely his executive officer for carrying out his will and decision.
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Why not a single Minister from MCA, Gerakan, MIC, SUPP, Sabah and Sarawak dare to be as outspoken as Nazri to speak out against racism as well as BTN and Utusan Malaysia’s racist outpourings which subverts the very basis of a multi-racial Malaysian nation?
Posted by Kit in MCA, UMNO, nation building on Thursday, 17 December 2009
Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz is proving to be a political leader of surprises, not only with his bold and courageous denunciation of Biro Tata Negara (BTN) divisive, racist and seditious indoctrination course but in speaking out forthrightly against Utusan Malaysia’s unadulterated racism.
Condemning Utusan Malaysia for its “outdated” racist propaganda, Nazri said the Umno-owned newspaper must accept that Malaysia is a multi-racial country.
It is a tragic and terrible commentary on the success of the nation-building process that 52 years after nationhood, a national daily which is owned by UMNO, the party in power in the past five decades, has refused to accept that Malaysia is a multi-racial country and continue to call Chinese as immigrants and Indians with derogatory terms like “keling”.
With such racist mindset and mentality in the corridors of power, Najib’s 1Malaysia concept and policy has no meaning whatsoever, and it is no wonder that the public preview of the 1Malaysia programme for the seven National Key Results Area (NKRA) initiatives today has to be put off.
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What the Greater Unity Plan involves and implies:
By Thomas Lee
(1) Ignoring and dismissing the majority will of the party central delegates in wanting to remove the top two leaders by claiming that they lack the two-third vote to effect the dismissal, but not acepting the fact that the top two lack the support of more than half of the grassroots delegates.
(2) The coming together of the two former enemies for the sole purpose of retaining power despite losing massive support from the grassroots members. One leader is a shameless person who has no intergrity and lost all credibility when he reneged on his pledge that he will resign even if he lost by a vote but shamelessly stays on and becoming the laughing stock of the country. Another leader has a soiled reputation the subject of ridicule and derision among the people, bringing disrepute to the party.
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