Ong Vs Chua: who will win?
By Sim Kwang Yang
The war between MCA President Ong Tee Kiat and his Deputy Chua Soi Lek is now the hottest news in mainstream Chinese newspapers like Sin Chew Jit Poh and Nanyang Siang Pao, and on net news portals like Malaysiakini, Merdeka Review, Fung Yin Times, and the Chinese version of Malaysian Mirror.
Numerous Chinese bloggers from both sides of the conflict have also been engaged in a war of words.
As an outsider and a bystander who is never too fond of MCA brand of politics, I watch this much ado about MCA internal power struggle with great amusement. But as a commentator of current events in Malaysia, I feel obliged to make some sense of the present MCA crisis in the context of our evolving Malaysian political culture.
The first thing that comes to mind is that Chinese politicians like to quarrel among themselves, even within their own political party.
For the life of me, I still cannot understand fully why the different factions within SUPP should quarrel so much over the formation of the Dudong Branch in Sibu. Perhaps, they do not realise they are on the brink of being decimated by the DAP in Sarawak.
From the early days of their political life, MCA has never really been free of internal fights. The losers like Lim Chong Yu and Lim Keng Aik would just leave MCA to join Gerakan. I have lost count of the number of times this premier old party has been torn apart by internal factional fights.
This time, the fuse has been lit by the expulsion of Chua from the party by the presidential council which accepted the recommendation of the party disciplinary committee on the ground that his sex scandal has caused the party image to be tainted.
I should think so. A person who has been so tainted in his personal life should have retired from politics. But then his supporters argued that he has been exonerated by the party when he was elected to be the party Deputy President. That may be so, but it does not mean that the Malaysian Chinese voters had exonerated him yet.
After his sacking, the mainstream and alternative media is crazy with all kinds of speculations on what will happen next. They are full of inside information from unnamed sources on what Chua supporters would do in the immediate future.
