The UMNO formula for Chinese is rooted in colonial legacy: divide and rule. The DAP approach has been shaped by rage at umno: avoid and rule. All Chinese want from both claimants to national power is provide and rule; not because they are Chinese but because they think they are Superior than the malays.After getting a spanking from Nazri, like a chastised child the MCA central committee member claims, "Now that the ultra-Malays who destroyed Tunku Abdul Rahman's Alliance are out of BN and in Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu), BN leadership must seize this opportunity to navigate BN to its rightful 1Malaysia course or the spirit of the Alliance’s founding years of Tunku Abdul Rahman," which is again horse manure disguised as a mea culpa...This kept both clerics and community poor, but the atmospherics were rich in tokenism. A normal relationship with Malay voters would have kept the balance of debate along jobs and revival. This bargain with the extreme suited UMNO perfectly. There were not too many jobs on offer in the first phase of our development. The upper class got the chunk of the initial bite; the second surge went to 'middle' who had mobilized under different banners but displayed common economic purpose. The Chinese got false promises and high drama from MCA, hyped with high-voltage simulation of a "Hindu backlash" . Such a backlash never came because it never existed. But fear was the electoral key: if Chinese and the Hindus could be driven into a polling booth on the basis of fear, why waste jobs on them?
BN is not playing the ‘jaguh kampung’, Umno is in a ‘fight to the death’ struggle with Najib refuseniks and is attempting to keep their rural voting bases safe from the clutches of a newly revitalised Malay power group. The reality is that the rural demographic in the peninsula and Umno’s vote banks in Sabah and Sarawak are holding BN together, and this is because of Umno and not because of BN.
The reality is that, unofficially, Umno has given up on urban voters and it is the responsibility of MCA to shore up support and make the case for Umno and not BN.the MCA operative is aware that there are many Umno-elected officials who do not support Najib but are only interested in their political survival that translates to Umno’s survival.
UMNO squeezed into space created by the psychological bounce of a traumatic history. After dramatic initial resistance to British colonialism,Malay elites bought into separatism with a vengeance, particularly when they realized that the tactics of division could perpetuate their privileges within a slice of geography. , UMNO capitulated intellectually and tweaked the slogan, after 1957, from division to isolation. It concluded that the quickest route to the Malay vote was through accommodation with the extreme rather than dialogue with the MCA after 1957 became the fashionable ideology of the landed gentry and middle class When the Chinese left for Malaya the vacancy was filled by suddenly empowered clerics who, unsurprisingly, stressed faith over economics.
Every election registers some flicker of change on the barometer. In the Congress case, the chicken came before the egg and produced a farmful of votes. With the UMNO, the egg must come before the chicken. This egg has to be fertilized in the mind. In this important therefore that the most significant statement of the campaign so far was Najib's remark that the only religion of a politician must be the Constitution of Malaysia. This may be only the opening line of a chapter yet to be written, but it is already a huge variant on conventional perception. The themes of that chapter must be employment, education and political equity, for they are the true antidote to any community's impoverisation.The spat between the MCA’s Ti Lian Ker and Umno’s Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz is not about the disparity of power between the component parties of BN but rather the continuing existential crisis of the MCA that it has been unable to overcome since losing the support of the Chinese community.
Whereas the MIC has accepted its role as the water boy to Umno, MCA desperately attempts relevance in a turbulent time of ‘Melayu’ political upheaval.
There has always been a disparity of power within BN. However, parity of power was never the currency between the MCA plutocrats and Umno potentates who shaped the national agenda and serviced the gravy train that enabled this country to remain in relative functionality for decades.
These schemers were aided by a polity willing to subscribe to the so-called social contract, as long as the people could pursue their economic agendas and live in relative harmony.
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