I saw today in the press a photograph of the MCA Deputy President Datuk Seri Wee Ka Siong in Bagan in Penang last night sitting beside two empty chairs, one carrying the photograph of Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng and the other myself.
If I am equally petty-minded, I can put an empty chair at today’s kopitiam dialogue and ask why Wee Ka Siong is not here to hear what we have to say.
But this is being very mean and petty-minded, the work of “petty people” – “hsiao ren” – which we have no time to indulge in.
But from Wee’s MCA programme in Bagan last night, the MCA Deputy President is plucking up courage to go to Bagan, Guan Eng’s parliamentary constituency, which is something the MCA President, Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai, would never dare to do.
I would encourage Wee to pluck up courage to visit Bagan more often, and even to pluck up sufficient courage to contest against Guan Eng in Bagan if Wee is really convinced that his RM20 billion Penang undersea tunnel scandal is not concocted from thin air.
If Wee plucks up sufficient courage to contest in Bagan, we do not know who will be the MCA candidate contesting against the DAP Johore Chairman Liew Chin Tong, who will leave the Kluang parliamentary seat to contest in the Ayer Hitam parliamentary seat in the 14th General Election.
Be that as it may, the possibility that Wee may pluck up sufficient courage to contest against Guan Eng in Bagan in the 14GE underlines the important point that the Ayer Hitam parliamentary constituency is not a personal contest between Liew Chin Tong vs Wee Ka Siong, but a contest between Liew Chin Tong versus Barisan Nasional as to whether a change of government in Putrajaya and Nusajaya to bring about a new Pakatan Harapan Federal government in Putrajaya and a new Pakatan Harapan Johor Government in Nusajaya is possible and achievable.
There is no doubt that if Pakatan Harapan can win Ayer Hitam in the 14GE, then Pakatan Harapan is well on the way to form the new Federal Government in Putrajaya and the new Johore State Government in Nusajaya.
I note that neither the MCA President nor Wee himself had said that Wee would be contesting in Ayer Hitam, while Liew Chin Tong has done so. So Wee must accept full responsibility if he chooses to contest against Liew Chin Tong in Ayer Hitam.
(Speech at the DAP kopitiam ceramah in Ayer Hitam on Saturday, March 31, 2018 at 12 noon)