MIC and MCA must buck up!

MIC MPs should team up with their Pakatan counterparts to improve the lot of Indians while MCA should rescind its stupid decision to stay out of the cabinet

COMMENT

Although MIC did not achieve magnificent victories in the 13th General Election, its lawmakers are still part of government, thus they can do a lot to help the Indian community.

Appended below is the list of MIC MPs:

1 G Palanivel (Cameron Highlands MP, Natural Resources & Environment Minister)

2 S Subramaniam (Segamat MP, Health Minister)

3 P Kamalanathan (Hulu Selangor MP, Deputy Education Minister)

4 M Saravanan (Tapah MP, Deputy Youth & Sports Minister)

However, the Indian voice in Parliament is still more from Pakatan Rakyat’s (PR) side as shown below:

1 N Surendran (PKR, Padang Serai MP)

2 Michael Jeyakumar Devaraj (PKR, Sungai Siput MP)

3 G Manivannan (PKR, Kapar MP)

4 Kasthuriraani Patto (DAP, Batu Kawan MP)

5 M Kulasegaran (DAP, Ipoh Barat MP)

6 V Sivakumar (DAP, Batu Gajah MP)

7 Charles Santiago (DAP, Klang MP)

8 Gobind Singh Deo (DAP, Puchong MP)

9 Karpal Singh (DAP, Bukit Gelugor MP)

Although MIC has said that it captured 60% of the Indian vote, it still has less seats than DAP’s Indian MPs! Even if one were to say that Gobind and Karpal are Sikhs, it only shows that DAP and MIC have an equal number of Indian MPs at four each, but DAP is the only party which has put Sikh MPs in Parliament.

Okay, that was a digression but what all these simply means is that MIC’s Indian MPs should work together with Pakatan’s Indian MPs to improve the lives of the marginalised Indians especially in terms of education.

Free tuition classes must be provided for those who cannot afford it and brilliant Indian students must be given free university education. No one must be left behind because only through education can a society progress. Then we can see the number of unemployed Indians being reduced as more of them become gainfully employed in the private as well as public sectors. Those who are not academically-inclined can be sent to vocational schools or skills-training centres so that they can acquire useful commercial/trade skills.

Currently the PR-helmed Selangor state government has provided free tuition to poor Indian students. These efforts are well and good and should be increased constantly so that more Indians can benefit from this programme. Pakatan’s microcredit scheme has also helped Indians to set up small businesses after training them on how to start up and manage a business. This microcredit scheme has become so successful that it has already been adopted by other parties.

“Never mind that so long as the rakyat who are in need can benefit from it,” said PKR’s strategy director, Rafizi Ramli commenting on the same.

MCA leaders should wise up

DAP’s Batu Gajah MP, V Sivakumar recently challenged MIC to list out the names of the 1,500 students who have been said to have been given scholarships by the BN federal government but so far no one has responded to the challenge. Listing out the names of the 1,500 students is a good move so that Indians can know who is the future hope for the community.

Now that MIC’s P Kamalanathan is the Deputy Education Minister, he can easily obtain grants and funds for Indian students to be sent abroad for further studies and this can certainly uplift the Indians.

In addition to that, Hindraf’s P Waythamoorthy as a Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department can surely do a lot more to assist the Indians with red MyKad to obtain a blue one. He has asked for five years to do this so Indians can evaluate his performance five years from now.

He and the MIC lawmakers together should also voice out their concern for the Indians who had died in custody.

All Indian lawmakers whether they are in BN or PR should do their best to bring up Indian issues in Parliament. But the onus is still more on the MIC men as they are allocated funds by the BN federal government whereas Pakatan’s lawmakers have had their funds withheld. So the best that the Pakatan MPs can do is to raise Indian issues in Parliament and provide legal aid for those who need it.

As for MCA, they are stupid to stay out of the cabinet. They have seven MPs and 11 state assemblymen and they too can do a lot for the Chinese community if they were to take up ministerial posts. Therefore at this point in time it is not necessary to list down their names here as they are still in oblivion. MCA leaders should wise up and act to improve the lot of the poor urban Chinese and the poor Chinese in the small towns instead of staying egoistically conceited.

It is time for them to rescind their stupid decision to stay out of the cabinet. This method of punishing the Chinese voters will only make the Chinese more furious with them.

MIC leaders on the other hand have chosen the wiser and better path by participating in the cabinet. Now there will be Indian voices in government and in opposition and thus Indian voices will be heard louder and Indians can derive benefit from both sides of the political divide working for their well-being.

Time now to put aside all animosity and work together for the common good of the electorate. For isn’t this the reason why these people wanted to go into politics in the first place?