(picked from themalaysianinsider.com) :
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/14777-anwar-eyes-east-malaysia-despite-pacts-troubles
First MCA presidential council meeting today amid Tee Keat-Soi Lek spat By Shannon Teoh
KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 2 — The MCA will have its first presidential council meeting since party polls last October as the rift between the party's top two leaders threatens to split the beleaguered Barisan Nasional component member again.
When the previous party leadership chose to retire following the MCA's poor showing in last March's general election, it was suppose to pave the way for major reforms and reconcile rival factions.
But since party delegates voted in Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat as president and Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek as his deputy, it has created a new rivalry and caused a major split in the party.
The top two leaders have not even met each other since attending the new central committee meeting in November.
The two leaders have, however, been having a very public spat with each other, and today's presidential council meeting is set to be fiery.
By convention, the presidential council is usually formed soon after the first central committee meeting, which itself took a longer-than-usual three weeks to be called.
Under previous leaderships, the presidential council usually met weekly before Cabinet meetings so as to make a clear and concerted party stand on issues.
The council is made up of the president, his deputy, the vice-presidents and other central committee members chosen by him.
But even members of the central committee told The Malaysian Insider that they had no idea who has actually been appointed.
While none of these things are in breach of the party constitution or regulations, they have gone against the grain and members are confused as to why Tee Keat has done things contrary to tradition.
The lack of direction from the leadership, along with what is now appearing to be an all-out war between the top two has left members low on morale and uncertain over the party's future.
Tee Keat and Dr Chua had agreed to set aside differences in a cordial meeting soon after the elections, but there has been little follow through on that.
The president's decision not to appoint Dr Chua as disciplinary chief or liaison chief for any state coincided with a public spat over whether the president would recommend a return to the Cabinet for his deputy.
Dr Chua had resigned as Health Minister after being exposed in a sex scandal last January.
A year on from that, Dr Chua is still in the limelight on the back of his involvement in the roiling debate over Ketuanan Melayu, or Malay Supremacy, and most recently clarifying that he had technically not resigned as MP for Labis despite promising to do so, as in his muddled state of mind, he neglected to send a letter to the Dewan Rakyat Speaker.
The recently established MCA Integrity Watch Group has called on him to resign again from his post, saying that he lied to the then MCA president, the prime minister and the public.
Earlier, it also called him a "disgrace and liability to the party since we members cannot even mention that we are from MCA without inviting a snigger from others," over his insistence on making a political comeback despite the sex scandal.
The legal bureau of Selangor MCA has also followed suit, criticising his lack of integrity.
With Tee Keat having a strong power base in the state, it is understood that he is trying to slow down Dr Chua's momentum via proxy groups.
"The watch group said it would not dwell on past issues, so why did it criticise Dr Chua over the scandal? If anything, Ong's recent press conference on the RM4.6 billion Port Klang Free Zone debacle left many questions unanswered," one grassroots leader told The Malaysian Insider.
On the other hand, Tee Keat has been low-key as his duties as Transport Minister has seen him jetsetting from one country to another.
Some members have noticed that Dr Chua has been the one taking up issues.
"As bureau chief of government policy monitoring, he has brought up more issues than the president has," a divisional leader said.
There is also general bemusement that when Tee Keat was elected president, he talked about change and work starting immediately.
But if anything, the pace of progress has been slow, and the phrase "I do not know what is going on" is often repeated among the grassroots.
The spat between Tee Keat and Dr Chua is reminiscent of the feud between then president Tun Dr Ling Liong Sik and his deputy Tan Sri Lim Ah Lek which led to both being made to resign in 2003 as part of a "peace plan" formulated by former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
From the pool of four vice-presidents, the double resignation led to Datuk Seri Ong Ka Ting and Tan Sri Chan Kong Choy replacing the duo ahead of the more senior Datuk Seri Dr Fong Chan Onn and Datuk Chua Jui Meng.
Ka Ting and Chan also did not see eye-to-eye on matters and similarly both stepped down at this year's party polls after the poor showing in the March 8 general election.
While having a confrontational top two is not new to the party, MCA is now at a crossroads after March 8 and the Chinese clearly supporting the opposition parties.
Unsurprisingly, when asked what the future holds for the party if things continue along these lines, members were not optimistic.
Finished, irrelevant, tah pao or bungkus (Cantonese and Bahasa Malaysia slang meaning to fold and dissolve) or becoming the next Gerakan — a fellow Chinese-majority BN component that was nearly wiped out on March 8 — were the replies.
1 comment:
hooray they are digging their own graves.....
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