Does Samy Vellu deserve a dignified exit?

By Kee Thuan Chye

COMMENT S Samy Vellu should have no cause to rejoice when he steps down as MIC president on Dec 6 and takes on his new job as a special envoy for Malaysia. In fact, if he were a man who has the slightest bit of self-pride, he might even feel ashamed. Because from the look of it, he has been bought out. He has been told to step down even earlier than he had planned to.

If he had had his way, he would have opted to quit in September 2011, which was what he had announced earlier in the year. Then at the July MIC general assembly, as pressure mounted within his own party calling for his departure, he hinted it could be in January.

But in politics, a month is apparently too long, so he now has to go in early December. Apparently, too, Najib Tun Razak, prime minister and Barisan Nasional chief, knows he cannot afford to have Samy Vellu stay on longer if the general election is going to be called next year. Some pundits say it could be as early as March.

So the deal was made. Samy Vellu leaves, and in return he gets the post of Malaysia’s special envoy for infrastructure to South Asian countries. A position with ministerial status. It is also apparently to give him face, provide him a dignified exit.

But why should the MIC get another ministerial position after its poor performance at the last general election? Where is the regard for values if rewards are given when they are not deserved?

More importantly, why create a new position which would incur cost to the taxpayer? Samy Vellu’s salary, perks, claims and whatever else in the new position he’s taking will amount to a substantial amount. Why does the rakyat have to pay for it?

And if indeed it is to get him to step down as MIC president earlier, why does the rakyat have to pay for a strategic move made by Najib to safeguard his coalition’s position at the next general election?

This is not the only sweetening deal Najib has made in recent times with the MIC. Only some months ago, he made G Palanivel, Samy Vellu’s proclaimed successor, a deputy minister apparently for having left him out as candidate for the Hulu Selangor by-election. That was not right either. It was another case of misplaced values. It was sending out the wrong message to Malaysians, cultivating the wrong kind of culture.

Obviously, Najib wants to win Indian hearts to make them swing back to BN at the next general election, but the means he employs can only reflect poorly on him.

What happens next, when deputy minister Palanivel assumes the MIC leadership with a designated second-in-command, Dr S Subramaniam, who is already a full minister? Will the new party boss be happy with being of lower rank in the Cabinet to his subordinate in the party? Would another deal be made to set things “right”? But why should yet another ministerial position be granted to the MIC just to give Palanivel face?

The rakyat should be incensed by all this wheeling and dealing.

Talking big

Does Samy Vellu deserve the position he’s been given? He was one of the most unpopular members of the Cabinet prior to 2008, and when he lost his Sungai Siput constituency in the last general election, there was jubilation all round. It marked the most famous defeat of March 8.

By then, he had served as a minister for 29 years, and the public had been grumbling for years that he had stayed too long. So why must they still put up with his presence and pay him a salary? After all, as a minister, was he outstanding in terms of performance?

Many of us are more likely to remember him for his habit of side-stepping responsibility and talking big. When cracks appeared on Kuala Lumpur’s Middle Ring Road II, he blamed the weather. “There’s some problem with the design but it’s the weather in this country that contributed mainly to the structural problem,” he said.

Then when serious cracks appeared on beams supporting the Ampang-KL Elevated Highway, he got defensive and told the press off, and challenged them to check all the flyovers in the country and write how bad they were.

When the landslide occurred in 2004 on the North-South Expressway near Gua Tempurung, he conveniently said it was an “act of God”. Critics pointed out that as Works Minister, Samy Vellu distinguished himself more in covering up construction incompetencies and thereby protecting the real culprits.

Always the bravura showman who spoke before thinking, he once invited the public to call his mobile phone if they had any complaints to make. “Don’t go to the TV stations,” he said. “Is the TV station doing the repairs and maintenance work?” No more than a couple of days later, he announced that he was unable to sleep at night because he was getting too many calls and SMSes, so he told the public to stop complaining to him.

As a politician, he said things that brought him ridicule and embarrassment. Prior to the Lunas by-election of 2000, he boasted that the MIC would win it, and that if it didn’t, he would stay on in Kulim and not return to KL. The MIC did lose, but he was back in KL in no time, probably suffering from amnesia.

Just before the last general election, he said, “An army can come but I know how to fight it out.. The people in Sungai Siput are with me.” On March 8, the army of voters did come and they swept him off his seat. It was probably the umpteenth time he had to eat his own words.

His own big answer

After Dec 6, the question he will have to ultimately answer, at least to himself, is whether his lording over the MIC for three decades has brought improvement to the ethnic community it claims to represent. If it has, would there have been the Hindraf demonstration of 2008?

As one commentor on Malaysiakini once put it eloquently: “The job that Samy Vellu should have done over so many years as president of the Indian community was done by Hindraf in single day only (sic).” Nothing could be more telling of the MIC’s ineffectuality as a partner in BN.

Samy Vellu promised poor Indians a dream by getting them to invest in Maika Holdings Bhd, but it was mismanaged and made huge losses. He kept promising them that they would get back their money, saying “Samy Vellu is their guarantee”. In 2006, he said a buy-back scheme would pay investors back RM130 for every RM100 they put in. But it didn’t happen.

The following year, he said, “For those who want their money back, I have made arrangements to give their money back to them.” As it turned out, no one quite believed him. Investors had not even been paid dividends since 1995.

He finally managed to get G Gnanalingam to buy over Maika Holdings on the eve of the Hulu Selangor by-election voting, aptly timed to win Indian votes. Even then, the poor Indians who had invested their money would get back only what they had put in and nothing more, and some had been investing for more than two decades. They had hoped the money would grow, but Samy Vellu let them down.

Will it therefore be a dignified exit for Samy Vellu on Dec 6, despite the government’s bid to help him out? This, of course, is a rhetorical question. Samy Vellu, no doubt, will provide his own big answer. But perhaps it would be best that he kept it to himself.

Dramatist and journalist Kee Thuan Chye is the author of 'March 8: The Day Malaysia Woke Up'