RITA SIM
Untangling complexities of

Chinese community

2009/11/16 read the full article here .

MCA has to resolve its internal problems, and soon, before the Chinese community looks elsewhere for more reliable representation, writes RITA SIM

THE MCA appears to be incapable of resolving its internal leadership crisis. Personalities are a powerful factor, but the MCA turmoil also reflects fundamental cleavages in the Malaysian Chinese community.

The MCA leadership conflict should have ended on Oct 10 at the party's extraordinary general meeting when president Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat received a no-confidence vote -- he had previously given members his word that he would step down should this eventuate, but then reneged.

Ong has been clearly deprived of a mandate and now rules by fiat, putting the country's six million Chinese in the untenable position of being led by a party with just over 10 per cent (840,489 votes) of the total national vote of 7,944,274.

To make matters more complex, the Registrar of Societies reappointed Ong's sacked deputy Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek, leaving Ong's new deputy, Health Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai, to form a third faction opposing both Ong and Chua.

There is increasing speculation that other alternative channels within the Chinese community may step into the political representation vacuum left by the MCA's inability to perform.

This certainly bodes ill for an MCA that has long been the community's chief political connector. It also bodes ill for the DAP and Gerakan (respectively perceived by the community as a permanent opposition and a regional party respectively), or any other party seeking to expand its political reach by appealing to Chinese sentiment in the country.

Such a development would cut these parties from their moorings, and the MCA, for one, would be rendered not so much ineffective as utterly redundant. What purpose could the party serve if the three most important concerns of the Chinese -- culture, business, and vernacular education -- are addressed through non-political channels?

Here lies another problem: it is a common error to think of the Chinese in Malaysia as an entirely homogeneous mass.

A proposed framework for segmenting the Chinese community is the "G1, G2, and G3" model. The majority can be identified as "G1s". They identify readily with traditional ideas of ethnic Chinese culture, language and expression. This group wholeheartedly supports Chinese media and schools. The existence of Huazong, Dong Zong, and other organisations -- including the MCA -- depends very much on the G1s.

The "G2s" are English-educated Chinese. Predominantly, if not exclusively, middle-class and urban, they identify more with specific civil society issues and are more likely to forge alliances with like-minded individuals or groups (church groups, for example, or Lions or Rotary Clubs) than with any of the traditional Chinese associations.

The "G3s" exist between these two groups in an overlap. G3 Chinese are those who, through language or work, have moved from one group to the other and survived, and perhaps even thrived.

The G2s and G3s are unlikely to associate themselves with any "Chinese" platforms at all, and may move in circles that are markedly multiracial as a factor of class and education. They are unrepresented politically by the MCA, as traditional communal dynamics cannot appeal to them.

MCA, in appealing to the G2s for support, should perhaps bear in mind that its first president, Tun Tan Cheng Lock, was a G2 and rose to prominence at a time when both the Chinese and Malay communities in the country were politically fragmented.

If the Chinese community, in the broadest definition, requires a single political leader as the community's representative in government, perhaps the time has come to look outside traditional power structures to the various Chinese groups and associations, for example, or perhaps even outside the strictly Chinese-speaking community.

Such a move could bring the community as a whole a step closer towards devolving political power to a less communal platform.

Conversely, it could rejuvenate the community's political leadership in spirit that inspired its leaders in the early years of the Alliance -- although any such development would require radical rethinking on the part of the entire community, and especially the MCA.

The writer is deputy chairman of Insap, the MCA think-tank. The views expressed here are her own . NST

Rita is also no longer the Deputy Chairman of Insap as she had tendered her resignation to Insap. She was appointed to Insap when Ka Ting was the MCA President and subsequently appointed to a high powered position in Sin Chew Jit Poh.

Ong Ka Ting recommended her to the following :

• Appointed to the board of Sin Chew Media Corporation Berhad in year 2004 as an Executive Director, oversees operational departments such as ICT, Production and HR & Admin departments. In year 2006, her portfolio was extended to covering circulation, logistics and distribution, and marketing departments.

• Sits on the Board of Yayasan Sin Chew as a trustee and holds directorship in several private limited companies involved in telecommunications and manufacturing of engineering and industrial products.