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PAS : KE ARAH PEMERINTAHAN ISLAM YANG ADIL
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Surprise! Surprise! The Lims Join the MCA
The Chinese version of the "wayang kulit" played
itself out in Kuala
Lumpur yesterday when the MCA presidential council
decided to accept as
members the two Gerakan state assemblymen in Penang
who quit the party
within days of the general elections last November.
The Prime Minister
was against it. So was the deputy prime minister,
Dato' Seri Abdullah
Ahmad Badawi. But the MCA now rubs the UMNO leaders'
noses for not
being able to head the Penang state government. With
rumours the MCA
president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, cavorts with
Tengku Razaleigh
Hamzah these days, hedging his bets, Lim Boo Chang and
Lim Chien Aun in
MCA is high stakes politics. One hopes the MCA has
the strength and,
more important, the guts to hold its ground, as Dato'
Kadir Jasin could
not as editor-in-chief of the New Straits Times group,
amidst the
fallout within UMNO. Even if Dato' Seri Abdullah now
says the "two
Lims" issue is resolved. It is not. The MCA is,
willy nilly, entwined
in the UMNO power struggle and can expect to live in
interesting times
for what they did. The political solution would have
meant that the two
Lims remain on tenterhooks a little while longer. But
the MCA wanted to
teach the Gerakan a lesson for not allowing it lead
the Penang state
government.
It is not just whether two state assemblymen from
a component party
could, if they find it short of the ideals for which
they joined, switch
to another component party. Usually they cannot, a
rule which kept
Keadilan from accepting several former DAP members
because DAP objected
to it. But political life in Malaysia is dictated by
UMNO and the
National Front, which does not allow it. This is now
breached with
MCA's formal acceptance of the Gerakan turncoats. But
in so doing, the
MCA brought the Chinese community as a pawn in the
UMNO struggle, a move
as critical of the then MCA president, Tun Tan Siew
Sin, walking out of
the Alliance government after the May 13 riots, to
lose forever their
traditional place in the coalition. Depending on how
the UMNO elections
proceed, the MCA presidential council decision could
force yet another
political clash between the Malays and the Chinese.
Why it accepted
them so soon when it could well have waited until
after the UMNO
elections in Malay is not known, but it was, in one
sense, the belling
of the political cat.
The two Lims are, of course, happy at this turn
of events, but the
Gerakan tries to put a brave front by twisting
history. Tun Lim Chong
Eu did not join Gerakan immediately after leaving the
MCA in 1959. He
formed another party which joined Gerakan when it was
formed in 1968.
The Gerakan secretary-general, Mr Chin Kwan Chye,
claims Tun Lim and Mr
Lim Boo Chang left the MCA over principles. Not so.
Tun Lim, as MCA
president, was outmanouevred in 1959 by the then UMNO
president and
Malayan prime minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman, over the
allocation of
seats in the general elections of that year, forcing
his abrupt
departure from the MCA. Mr Lim Boo Chang, a close
ally and aide, left
with him. Neither did the present Gerakan president,
Dato' Seri Lim
Kheng Yaik, leave because he thought the MCA violated
his principles; it
just expelled him. He should recall that came to my
house with Dato'
V.K. Chin -- the three of us were close then -- to
draft his resignation
from the cabinet in the early 1970s, and his
subsequent expulsion from
the MCA. Indeed, that was done with some viciousness
when VK and I
suggested that the original longish letter of
resignation be typed by
his secretary, who had close links with his nemesis,
Dato' (now Tan Sri)
Lee San Choon, and the two sentence resignation typed
by VK in Dr Lim's
office the next morning. Tun Tan fell for the bait,
called a press
conference to attack Dr Lim and answer the points made
in the unsent
letter. Tun Tan looked foolish the next day, and for
two decades he
never forgave me for that.
By that time, the Gerakan had split, with Tun Lim
taking the rump
into the National Front in 1973; what remained --
Pekemas Party -- was
then led by the late Tan Sri Tan Chee Khoon and
disappeared from the
political scene after Tan Sri Tan retired. Tun Lim
weaned Dr Lim, the
late Dato' Alex Lee, the former cabinet minister,
Dato' Paul Leong into
this Gerakan rump; which is how they returned to
National Front
politics. If you look at it dispassionately, Mr
Chin's claim that the
two younger Lims stabbed Gerakan in the back by their
resignation from
it is the same as the manner of their fathers'
departure from the MCA.
Indeed, neither the Gerakan nor the MCA has thought
this through. The
two political parties want to steal a march over the
other, ignoring the
larger political battle that is fought. That Dato'
Seri Abdullah
declined comment on what happened yesterday, say it
would raise
unnecessary speculation. That indicates the ground is
still nervous.
With the Gerakan wanting to rid those veterans who
disagree with how it
should be run, both the MCA and Gerakan ground is
still nervous about
the two Lims, even if they have found a new home in
the other's bosom.
The MCA ensured a deeply split Chinese community
within the National
Front and deeply vulnerable should events in UMNO take
a different turn.
M.G.G. Pillai
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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