Tee Keat: MCA should ‘ultimately’ be open to non-Chinese

By Yow Hong Chieh

August 02, 2010

Ong feels there needs to be buy-in when and if MCA opens its doors.

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 2 — Former MCA president Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat believes that his party should eventually open its membership to all ethnic groups, saying that was the direction in which Malaysian politics was headed.

MCA, like its senior partners Umno and MIC, are the main race-based parties within the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition.

“Ultimately, that should be the trend,” he told The Malaysian Insider, when asked if MCA should realign itself as a multi-racial party.

“Malaysian politics should herald into a new era where race-based politics or even religion-based politics will have no place in our political landscape.”

He said that even though MCA was a race-based party — “largely due to the historical background” — that did not mean the party was limited to practising race politics.

“Race-based party, no doubt. Structurally, yes. Membership-wise, yes. It is mono-ethnic. But it doesn’t mean that it is mandatory for us to practise race politics. That is two different things altogether.

“MCA, a race-based party, must always be inclusive,” he said in an interview recently.

The Pandan MP said that even MCA founder Tun Tan Cheng Lock frequently stated the need for the party to work for the benefit of all Malayans and seldom spoke of purely Chinese interests.

Similarly, he stressed that the MCA, both during his presidency and before, had always ensured that its initiatives were open to all communities.

He added that, while each Barisan Nasional (BN) component party had its own set of problems and priorities, there was no “fast and hard rule” as such issues varied from generation to generation.

“At different times, you might have different approaches or different initiatives altogether,” he said.

However, he lamented that people had yet to shed their “zero-sum mentality” when it came to communal interests, and said many still functioned with “compartmentalised” mindsets.

“People will always tend to look at it in very narrow perspective,” he said.

Razaleigh, who wants Umno to open up membership

Ong cautioned that, unless this prevailing mindset could first be changed, it would not make no difference even if MCA were to open its membership to the non-Chinese.

“You might open up your membership. But what if, end of the day, the people have yet to be mentally prepared, the people have yet to be convinced that you are going to practise... politics of inclusiveness?” he asked.

He said that unless the party first earned the respect of the people, there would be few takers for such a multi-racial MCA.

“You can’t just simply open up and say hey, we are here to accept you. What if the people are not convinced or less convinced? They won’t come to you.” he said.

He added that if MCA were to shed itself of its current race-based structure, it would neither forsake the interests of the Chinese nor those of the non-Chinese.

“For me, I don’t believe in such an argument that there are Chinese problems, Indian problems or Malay problems. To me, all these are the people’s problems,” he said.

Yesterday, Umno veteran Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah called for BN to be turned into a multi-racial party through direct membership in order to establish a two-party, non-race-based system.

Tengku Razaleigh, affectionately known as Ku Li, blamed Malaysia’s communitarian politics for making the country “sick” and warned of dire consequences if the trend towards racial disunity continued unabated.

“Our inability to grow up in our race relations is the chief reason why investors, and we ourselves, no longer have confidence in our economy. The reasons why we are behind Maldives in football, and behind the Philippines in FDI, are linked,” he said.

The Gua Musang MP called on both BN and Pakatan Rakyat (PR) to ensure that the country moved away from communalism and race politics.