“All will lose in MCA fight”

KUALA LUMPUR, 7 Oct 2009: There will be no winners in the showdown between MCA president Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat and former deputy president Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek this Saturday, political analyst Dr James Chin said today.

Whatever the results of the 10 Oct extraordinary general meeting (EGM), the Barisan Nasional (BN)’s second largest political party will ultimately lose the big battle for Chinese Malaysian votes in the next general election, Chin said today in a phone interview.

The professor of political science at Monash University, Malaysia noted that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak was reaching out to non-Malay Malaysians directly, and bypassing parties like the MIC and MCA.

He said he was confident Najib would call for elections next year instead of waiting until 2013, and this would mean the MCA would not have time to unite the party before the polls.

Ong “Whoever wins, Ong or Chua, they will not have enough time to recover the Chinese [Malaysian] ground for the BN. In other words, no matter what the outcome, it will be a broken MCA for the next general election,” Chin said.

He said previously, people did not think that internal party problems would mean the end of the MCA. However, the sentiment now was that the party was doomed, regardless of who wins on Saturday.

He said unlike earlier party fights which were based on “who would get what”, the situation now was very personal and one where the winner would take all.

Chua Chin noted that the showdown was a continuation of last year’s unfinished business between Ong and Chua. “It is actually part two from last year. If Chua had gone for the presidency against Ong as he had planned [in October 2008 during the party polls], [the party] would not be facing this crisis today. It was [Datuk] Chua Jui Meng’s entry that stopped Chua (Soi Lek) from contesting the presidency.

“It is an interesting situation in so far as both teams are right in their own way. One team believes you cannot have a ‘porn star’ leading a major political party, and the other believes that you cannot have a ‘little emperor’ who just insists on doing this his own way,” Chin said.

While the current fight was deemed rather insignificant by non-MCA members, he said, the party would remain relevant so long as the BN existed.

“[T]he conflict in the party is very real among party members, and there are many who still have a strong sentiment about MCA, especially those who are 35 years old and above,” he said.

See also:
MCA’s irrelevant civil war

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