MCA delegates must put Party and Nation first

MCA delegates must put nation first
comment by Datuk Seri Yuen Yuet Leng

THE MCA is literally sitting on the edge of a political precipice. Its delegates have on Saturday one and only one choice. They must in full realisation of their critical responsibility and selfless duty, not just an obligation to community, to vote only in the context of community and nation.

They will collectively be responsible and answerable in history for MCA’s survival as a united party and whether a reformed MCA can be strong enough to play its part in the nation.

In so far as the Chinese outside the party are concerned, many already think that the MCA is a dying duck. If its crisis of leadership is not solved in the interest of the party, it will be a dead duck. In any case, if it still refuses to die it can only be just an emasculated and split MCA duck with only one leg and one wing.

This at best, can only be a lame duck quacking pitifully with abject embarrassment all round – a far cry from the vibrant, impressive rakyat-conscious MCA I once knew in the Alliance despite its stigma of being a rich man’s party. It was fortunately balanced by a compassionate heart and the political will to serve its less fortunate compatriots without any prejudice to the needs of fellow Malay Malayans.

I remember during the regroupment of isolated Chinese squatter houses in the Ayer Kala area during the early emergency years, how the Malay community came in force from neighbouring Kampung Malau and Lawin to help, move and carry raised Chinese houses into a defended and perimetered new village. That was sincere inter-community service with no strings attached. That is the heart of the Malay kampung folk as I knew them when I frequently patrolled those areas looking for communist terrorists. That was the heart of the Malay who could sit at little Chinese coffee-shops in the new village sipping their coffee without undue sensitivity alongside boisterous or noisy Chinese mahjong players.

MCA delegates have no choice but to stand by their elected incumbent president, Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat, whether they love him or not. He is not a total saint and this is not the time to look for a political saint whose pleading honesty may be his best qualification but who lacks the vital elements of definitive courage, purpose and selfless decision.

We are living in a political emergency where competing political forces, one professedly non-racial and the other, once substantively non-racial but had since, become too racial.

I trust this will enlighten any third group within MCA that its efforts, whatever the hopeful personal returns, will only sustain a no longer viable status quo within a relatively discredited BN.

It is only a strong and united MCA that can support and give additional courage and will to an Umno president who was once regarded as a youth radical but as prime minister of the nation has pledged to stand by his post for the good of the nation through his 1Malaysia concept.

Let not history say the MCA, MIC and other non-racial BN parties failed to risk their all together with a prime minister who progressively must risk his all for the same multiracial nation they believe in and which their founding forefathers believed so much in.

If this is impossible because of entrenched deviant or no longer valid reasons, then an independent multiracial party comprising more nationally enlightened members from all BN parties and the now very vocal but once silent majority should now come into the act in this new party which preferably should be led by qualified Malay leadership. Race is no longer material to leadership of the nation. A good Malay leader is better than a poor and indecisive Chinese leader. As Mao Zedong stated, "as long as the cat whatever its colour or species, can catch the mice."

The time has indeed come for the crystallisation of Datuk Onn Jaffar’s dream and vision. Hopefully, his grandsons and grand-nephews and those of Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Ismail, Tun Hamdan Tahir and a still living Tun Ghazali Shafie, Tun Hanif Omar and Tun Rahman Yakub will personally play their part in the revival of objective Malaysia which is truly Asia.