The MCA is right, but it's cold comfort

"This does not mean that MCA is finished, however. You remain the only opposition in town

."
– My open letter to MCA

Many readers have been emailing me asking what I thought of Pakatan Harapan’s loss in the Semenyih by-election. Two points need to be considered. The first is whether this victory will stem the leakage of Umno into Bersatu. 

The second I elaborated in my article about that familiar Malay tune in Semenyih – “So, the real question about playing the Malay tune, in Semenyih and beyond, is how far right is the Malay Harapan establishment willing to go to defeat the Umno and PAS union, and how far is the non-Malay establishment willing to follow the Harapan Malay establishment?”

MCA secretary-general Chew Mei Fun’s claim that Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad is using DAP to further his Bumiputera agenda is correct. Malay power brokers have always used their non-Malay coalition members to further their racialist agendas. 

This is part of the 'social contract' that supposedly maintains 'tolerance' – an odious word – amongst the various communities in Malaysia.

The thing that strikes me about Chew's claim is that while social media still likes to portray MCA as a spent force, there are many diehard Harapan supporters who grudgingly admit there is some 'truth' in what it is saying. 

I, on the other hand, do not have to grudgingly admit anything. I think MCA has been highlighting issues that need to be heard in this do-not-spook-the-Malays era.

However, it is not only Mahathir who has been using DAP to further his Islamic agenda; he is just the latest. Ever since Pakatan Rakyat, I warned that certain PAS personalities – and now Amanah political operatives – blurring the lines between Islam and the supposedly secular politics of DAP could only lead the latter down a very dangerous path.

Not mutually exclusive

In this country, race and religion are not mutually exclusive. You cannot court the one without the other. I have never seen the visceral hatred some Islamists – from any of the Malay power structures – have towards DAP than they ever exhibited towards MCA.

Why is that? Because MCA never attempted to define Islam as how some in DAP and their supporters do, when going about this Bangsa Malaysia propaganda.

While MCA has always been opposed to the policies of PAS, they went through a bad patch when the late Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat was in charge, because what he managed to do was play well with others in an attempt to democratically win federal power. 

This changed with Abdul Hadi Awang leading PAS and the alliance falling apart, which resulted in the birth of Amanah.

Just recently, a PAS strategist said that while the party has had its issues with MCA, they never thought it was hypocritical. They supported Umno – especially in the 'Mahafiraun' years when Mahathir was in power the first time – and did not hide their “Chinese face.”

'Bangsa Malaysia'

Look, when Chew talks about DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng’s eagerness to discard his 'Chinese' image in furtherance of Malay support, this goes to the heart of the horse manure politics of this new Malaysia.

I was appalled by the finance minister’s statement that he was “Malaysian” when he was chosen as finance minister. “When DAP leader and newly-appointed finance minister Lim Guan Eng says he considers himself Malaysian first, it is mendacious and subservient since he sitting at a table with someone who heads a Malay-only organisation, feebly makes noises (with his non-Malay partners) about following the constitution (as if the Federal Constitution is not a compromised document) when confronted about 'Malay rights,' but most importantly, it is a negation of non-Malay cultural identity at the expense of Malay realpolitik, which is the foundation of 'ketuananism'."

But didn’t MCA do the same thing during the long Umno watch? Yes and no. Yes, they were furthering the bumiputera agenda of whichever Malay potentate was in power, but no, they were not raising the toxicity level in the political landscape.

They never attempted to promote any agenda like the Bangsa Malaysia Kool-Aid, nor did they attempt to redefine Islam as a 'moderate' religion with the aid of Islamic political and religious operatives. 

They relied on Umno to do that, which was self-defeating, but if we are talking realpolitik, then it was the only option they had and for a time they had the support of the majority in the Chinese community.

I cannot blame MCA for this, nor DAP for that matter, because this is after all the malaise system: “Now I am not saying that the non-Malays had no part in making this system, but as recent events have demonstrated, most of us have very little intention of destroying the current system. Replacing former premier Najib Abdul Razak, in case you did not get the memo, is not destroying the system. It merely means we are setting the system back to its default setting.”

No lessons learned

Here's the thing. Why hasn’t DAP learned the lesson of the downfall of MCA? 

This is not a question of inexperience. DAP has led Penang and been a part of the Selangor government, and within this context, all they have managed to do is walk in the footsteps of MCA, while attempting to destroy it once and for all.

Did it ever occur to anyone that the problem with the Malay community is that there is very little choice when it comes to the political parties they vote for? Do we want the same kind of dilemma in the non-Malay communities? I think not.

Ultimately, if you are a non-Malay mainstream political party, in varying degrees, you have to service Malay power structures when it comes to the bumiputera agenda. 

What you can do is remain staunchly secular eschewing any kind of agenda of attempting to court Malay votes through Islam, and loudly advocate for egalitarian policies while supporting non-religious affirmative action programmes for the Malay community.

You have to do this so long as you are aligned with Malay-only political power structures.

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S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. A retired barrister-at-law, he is one of the founding members of the National Patriots Association. - Mkini