Bleak outlook for MCA

NONE of Umno's key partners in the peninsula is in great shape. But among Gerakan, MIC and MCA, it is MCA that has the most to lose.

In the last general election, MIC won only three parliamentary seats while Gerakan won only two. MCA, in contrast, won 15 seats. That might seem like a good outcome, but when you consider that it had 31 parliamentary seats before, it suddenly does not look like a good showing after all.

Unfortunately for MCA, the question on many people's minds is not whether it can do better this time around, but how much of loss can it stem?

Datuk Lee Hwa Beng, the former MCA state assemblyman for Subang Jaya, has predicted that MCA would only be able to win between five and 10 parliamentary seats this time around.

Whether Lee is accurate or not, the outlook is bleak for MCA. Granted, we are not looking at a wipe-out. Even the most pessimistic prediction does not state that MCA will win nothing at all. But the reason for that is ironic ... it is the Malays who will save MCA from total defeat.

Lee had done an interesting analysis of MCA's results in the 2008 general election, where it lost 25 out of the 40 parliamentary seats it contested. Of those 25 lost seats, all were in Chinese plurality constituencies.

According to Lee, of the 15 that it did manage to win, all were achieved with more support from the Malay community than the Chinese. What this shows is that the very community the MCA is supposed to represent has rejected it.

In the years leading up to the 2008 general election, Umno had grown increasingly hardline, with fiery rhetoric and keris-waving becoming a regular feature at its annual general assemblies, and MCA's top leaders have said nothing to all that.

While it could be said that Umno did its job in championing the rights of the Malays, the same could not be said of MCA for the Chinese. And the party paid the price for it at the 2008 polls. The problem is that there was little its leaders could do to change the situation post-GE12.

There was a time when MCA's message that a vote for DAP is a vote for PAS would be enough to scare the Chinese. But times have changed and the Chinese no longer fear PAS. In 2008, several PAS candidates won in mixed constituencies with the support of Chinese voters.

The other message that used to be effective was the notion that if the Chinese did not vote for MCA, there would be no Chinese representation in the government. But Lim Kit Siang and the gang countered that argument in 2008 by simply asking if the MCA had been standing up to Umno.

So, what is MCA left with? After five years, it has not found any new and compelling argument to show why the Chinese community should vote for it. If anything, it has made the Chinese electorate even angrier as it is still seen as appeasing Umno.

It does not help that its president, Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek, had not taken up DAP leader Lim Kit Siang's challenge to contest in Gelang Patah. Instead, he gave away that seat to Umno.

In all, MCA is ceding three seats to Umno. Chua tried to spin it positively, saying those three seats are only "on loan" but the negative impression of MCA kowtowing to Umno is stark.

To top it all off, two of the party's most outspoken personalities, Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat and Gan Ping Sieu, are not on the candidates list.

Is there any good news to come out of the MCA camp? So far, it does not look like it. "This coming GE is a do-or-die battle for MCA," Chua declared recently.

He probably has no idea just how many people think it is going to be the latter scenario.

-thesundaily