Choosing The Right Man

Ronnie Tan

The Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) is a showcase of the struggle of the Chinese community to live with dignity in Malaysia. And it’s a story that I didn’t read in a book, or learn in a classroom. I saw it and lived it.

I visualize a small man from China who braved the dangerous stormy seas to seek a better life in this country some seven decades ago. That small man with thick calluses on both hands worked 15 and 16 hours a day.

A man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith, morality and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example.

I learned about our kind of democracy from my father. And I learned about our obligation to each other in our family from him and from my mother. They seek a chance to work and to make the world better for their children, and they asked to be protected in those moments when they would not be able to protect themselves. This nation and this nation’s government, BN in general and MCA in particular did that for them.

All these moving stories and legacies of MCA is now at risk and the continued existence of MCA will be decided on the 10/10/2009 EGM at the MCA Hq. This EGM has been a brutalizing process. Two factions face each other and only one will be left standing.

On the one hand, there is the suspended deputy president Dr Chua Soi Lek who was found guilty by the Disciplinary Board for bringing disrepute to the party. Chua was caught with his pants down on film indulging in an extramarital sex in a hotel room in his hometown of Batu Pahat. Stripped of his party position, he has resorted to exhortation and pleading tearfully to be restored to his former position.

To the public, Chua has destroyed two most cherished institutions in our Asian society – the sanctity of marriage and family. To fellow Malaysians, Chua’s indiscretion has left him little to build on, save bitterness.

If Chua wins and takes over the presidency - we will see the dire consequences of what the central delegates had done, inevitable remorse and divisive recriminations will scar our spirits as Chinese people.

On the other hand, there is the incumbent president, Ong Tee Keat. His whole political life has been nothing but one long struggle for his people. He is outspoken and highly principled. His political ascension in MCA has been a long arduous journey. Ong is the sole MCA Member of Parliament in Selangor to survive the political tsunami of the 2008 General Election.

As president, he is resolved to transform and change MCA to meet the new aspirations of the younger generation of electorates and changed political environment. His righteous cause is to champion the desire of the people for a government which upholds morality, transparency and accountability.

He has even put his political career on line by his dogged determination to solve the multi billion ringgit PKFZ scandal amidst opposition from within and outside MCA and BN. He is determined to save our future generations from the mountains of debt being incurred in this PKFZ financial fiasco.

The future of MCA will depend on whether the central delegates have the courage to meet the challenges ahead and to live the future with dignity just as our shirtless and barefooted forefathers who came to this shores decades ago.

Nobody else can defeat or humiliate MCA – only its member can do that. The role of the central delegates, must be to vote as their moral conscience dictate, so that, 20 years from now when they are sitting with their grandsons on their knees and they ask them what they did in the MCA EGM 2009, the central delegates won’t have to cough, shift their grandsons to the other knee and say – “Well your granddaddy/grandma rode with the righteous Ong Tee Keat and shot down the tainted Chua Soi Lek, to give MCA and the Chinese community a life of dignity they richly deserve.

The future and the welfare of the Chinese community can never be protected or enhanced by a leader with a tainted record.

Ronnie Tan
Kuala Lumpur