Who is playing Chinese chess?

MCA uses PAS as a smokescreen to send flying daggers at the direction of DAP.

COMMENT

Chinese Chess is a terminology that is used by the Chinese to describe political maneuverings and plots to cause the opponent’s downfall.

This is the brand of politics that is being played by MCA against DAP as MCA president Dr Chua Soi Lek and his son Chua Tee Yong (Labis MP) are daily attacking DAP although they are always attacking PAS using these points:-

Kedah and Kelantan which are helmed by PAS have not seen any progress nor development; and,

The implementation of hudud law by PAS will thwart development and have a great impact on the lives of non-Muslims.

Although the attacks are aimed at PAS, the real target is DAP. This is called ‘attack without attacking’ which is more like shadow-boxing.

This strategy of indirect attack is executed so that the Chinese will be unable to detect MCA as attacking DAP.

MCA being a Chinese party will surely incur the wrath of the Chinese if it is seen as attacking DAP because DAP is popular among the Chinese.

Therefore, MCA uses PAS as a smokescreen to send flying daggers at the direction of DAP but make no mistake about it: the target is actually DAP.

MCA’s father-and-son team have also challenged DAP secretary-general, Lim Guan Eng to state who will be the Prime Minister in the event Pakatan Rakyat manages to capture Putrajaya.

Lim responded to the challenge by saying that if Pakatan captures Putrajaya, the Prime Minister will be Anwar Ibrahim but the Chua-and-Chua team then turned around and said that Lim was bluffing as the Prime Minister will be from PAS.

This twisting of words shows that Soi Lek and his son are both sneaky and sly as Lim was genuine in responding to their challenge.

Back to MCA’s first attacking point of the lack of progress nor any concrete development in Kedah and Kelantan as mentioned above, this point is always rehashed to show that DAP has associated with a backward party. This is to sway the support of the Chinese business community away from DAP.

Point No 2 pertaining to the implementation of hudud law is connected to point No 1 (no progress in Kedah and Kelantan) but hudud is given emphasis to scare the Chinese. MCA also stresses that hudud law will scare away investors.

High deception

MCA leaders also never fail to exhort DAP to state its stand on hudud law but to DAP this is a non-issue as PAS will never be able to implement it.

Besides making use of PAS as a decoy, Soi Lek also throws in a red herring by saying that Pakatan Rakyat has failed to keep its promises in states such as Penang and Selangor. This wide-angled attack is meant to show that MCA is attacking the whole of Pakatan and not targetting PAS alone so as not to anger the Malays.

This is deception at the highest order as Chua and Son’s actual target is still only DAP.

Another of Soi Lek’s ploy is to frighten the Chinese especially the business community and clan associations that without MCA’s representation in the government, Chinese voices will be muffled.

This is Soi Lek’s idea of a psy-war and the business community and clan associations may vote MCA due to being frightened in this manner although the layman or average Chinese could not be bothered about it.

So far, DAP does not seem to respond to MCA and treats MCA as a dog barking at the moon (also PAS’s party symbol).

This is DAP’s strategy – let MCA babble on because if DAP engages in a verbal battle with MCA, MCA will achieve prominence. Thus, it is better to let MCA sink into oblivion instead of giving them publicity.

In the world of politics, any publicity, whether good or bad is still publicity. Therefore, leaving MCA alone is DAP’s stance towards MCA and that is the reason why MCA is talking nineteen to the dozen everyday – to obtain publicity.

Copying strategies

Next, MCA also copies strategies belonging to Pakatan, albeit with great modifications such as the giving of RM100 to their party members who are senior citizens.

This idea was copied from Pakatan’s Penang state government whereby RM100 is given to the public senior citizens. Pakatan is giving to the rakyat unlike MCA who gives this sum to their own party members.

Another idea which MCA copied from Pakatan is the microcredit scheme which MCA wants to give to young business entrepreneurs but the keyword here is ‘young’.

MCA’s idea is copied from the brainchild of Pakatan’s Selangor Menteri Besar Khalid Ibrahim’s idea of ‘Merakyatkan Ekonomi Selangor’ where budding entrepreneurs will be enrolled in the microcredit scheme with no age criteria attached to it. MCA adds the age clause so as not to be seen as copying Pakatan.

MCA focuses on highlighting Pakatan’s faults but copying those Pakatan’s programmes which they think they can use to garner votes.

Is MCA then genuine in their intentions? If they were genuine, they would not criticise Pakatan only to copy the latter’s ideas.

Still, MCA has got a good level of support from the rural Chinese who are hellbent on voting MCA as it was done by their forefathers even before 1957.

To these rural Chinese, MCA is the be-all and end-all in their daily existence as in their minds the DAP is only an opposition party good in making noise. It is difficult for DAP to change the mindset of the rural Chinese because the latter only read the MCA-controlled Chinese dailies.

Therefore, wherein the rural Chinese are influential, for instance in Perak, Soi Lek himself is spearheading the war effort there in an attempt to woo Chinese support for BN.

DAP must never underestimate MCA. It is when the enemy seems to be down that he is at his most dangerous.

This is because the hudud issue can influence the rural Chinese while the lack of representation in government can greatly influence the clan associations and businessmen unless DAP can convince the Chinese that MCA’s voice in the BN federal government is nothing much to shout about.

Besides the above methods of attack, MCA’s latest ploy is to tell the Chinese that DAP is neglecting the Chinese to focus on pandering to the Malays by recruiting more Malay members.

Is MCA trying to imply that DAP wants to have a DAP Menteri Besar by recruiting Malays? MCA is sly in a subtle manner in the use of the race card as this DAP Menteri Besar issue will also frighten the Malays and prevent them from voting for DAP.

All in all, MCA is playing the politics of Chinese Chess – the politics of deceit, decoy and deception but will the rakyat be able to read their nefarious tactics?

Selena Tay is a FMT columnist.