Chua Soi Lek's "I told you so".

MM Online - Soi Lek: MCA like ICU patient getting wrong diagnosis:

Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek said MCA is in critical condition and yet still did not understand what went wrong. — Picture by Saw Siow Feng

KUALA LUMPUR, May 20 — Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek gave a damning appraisal of MCA’s future today, saying the party was in critical condition and yet still did not understand what went wrong.

In a Facebook post defending his previous stand for the party not to accept any Cabinet post after the 13th general election, the former MCA president said this would have allowed the party to renew itself from within.

He also insisted that MCA did not have any moral standing to claim Cabinet posts on the pretext of representing the Chinese community when the latter clearly rejected it at the ballot box.

It's Soi Lek's "I told you so" moment, wakakaka.

Ma-Hwa 

But based on his diagnosis (not forgetting he is a medical doctor, wakakaka), that the MCA could NOT even understand what want wrong in the recent general elections, the future of the MCA looks iffy.

For example, t'was said that (Malaysiakini) MCA president Liow Tiong Lai had attributed the party's defeat to PAS splitting votes, MCA's opposition to the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) (Amendment) Bill 2016 (Act 355) and billboards that said "voting BN equals voting Najib and wife".

Aren't those denying the truth why MCA was demolished kaukau by DAP and PKR?

Anyway, just a quick recollection on why CSL departed MCA, Wiki tells us:

In the Malaysian general election, 2013 MCA only won 7 of the 37 federal seats and 11 of the 90 state seats it contested. In the general election in 2008, it won 15 parliamentary and 32 state seats.

Chua said MCA remained adamant in not accepting any government post at both state and federal level, following its dismal performance in the just-concluded 13th General Election. The poor performance in the election led to calls for Chua's resignation.

Chua did not enter the following party poll for President, and in December 2013, Liow Tiong Lai was elected the President of MCA

CSL resigned twice, the first time because of his personal affair and then again after the MCA's disastrous 2013 performance which saw it's meager achievement in the previous 2008 GE being halved.

Recently, his son Chua Tee Yong was defeated in Labis by Pang Hok Liong, a retired DAP veteran called out for party service again. That defeat epitomised the MCA's pathetic standing amongst Chinese.

old cock beating young chook 

Though the MCA might have served the Chinese community significantly in the distant past (eg. obtaining citizenship for Chinese, vernacular education, etc), in recent decades, in fact since 1969 when it was overshadowed by its rival in BN, the Gerakan Party, it had already lost most Chinese support.

Dr Lim Chong Eu, ex-MCA president and former Gerakan Boss

he defeated MCA kaukau in Penang in 1969 

That's half a century ago. Admittedly it made a resurgence in the 1982 GE when its president Lee San Choon accepted a challenge from the DAP and contested in a large urban Chinese majority seat, namely Seremban, and defeated the incumbent DAP Chairman Chen Man Hin.

Not only did Lee won his challenge, his party won 24 out of 28 allocated parliamentary seats and 55 out of 62 state seats. Chinese like a man with balls, and Lee San Choon showed them he had the gonads, wakakaka.

But after that, in 1983, unexpectedly Lee San Choon resigned his presidency and cabinet post for unspecified reason. T'was said he didn't get along well with Mahathir just as another MCA bright boy Tan Koon Swan didn't gel with Mahathir.

It did give Chinese the impression Mahathir didn't like MCA's bright sparks who could be too independent for his comfort.

The next resurgence was in 1995, when Ling Liong Sik led MCA to its best electoral performance, winning 30 of the 34 allocated parliamentary seats and 71 of the 77 state seats, and secured a majority of Chinese votes at the expense of DAP.

Ling Liong Sik

"once I was PM of Malaysia" (for a day), wakakaka

MCA did well again in 1999 when following the Anwar 'black-eye' episode, it saved Mahathir's 6 o'clock, wakakaka.

The 2004 GE was its last ever good performance, thanks in large part to what many people believe to be the resignation of Mahathir as PM, wakakaka.

Chinese Malaysians were so rapt at the departure of someone they saw as an unfriendly-to-Chinese person  that they voted MCA in to win 31 of the 40 parliamentary seats and 76 of the 90 state seats the Chinese-based party had contested. Their children today think otherwise and have now placed Mahathir on a pedestal where once Anwar stood.

As mentioned, that was the LAST decent election performance by MCA, when thereafter the party slid all the way down to near-oblivion.

Its virtually total loss of popularity with the Chinese community could be attributed to the following:

(1) UMNO undermining it in the eyes of the Chinese as cowardly, servile (yes-men) and spineless [I don't mean to hurt my mateys in MCA but that's the truth],

This would be the BIGGEST factor for the Chinese community scorning and rejecting MCA, and in parallel, the Chinese community flocking around the DAP.

It's irrational but it reflects the Chinese humiliation, hurt and huff over UMNO-issued policies which they hurl at MCA as both the surrogate and actual target.  

(2) Poor leadership [eg. Liow Tiong Lai was a joke],

(3) MCA's purchase of the independent daily Nanyang Siang Pau which embittered Chinese journalists, Chinese NGOs, a large segment of MCA and the Chinese community. T'was considered as a loss in freedom of the press.

(4) Chinese community's perception of MCA as a corrupt party, beholden to only Tai-Koe UMNO for its leaders' own gains. This image of MCA has stayed with the Chinese since 1969.

(5) Ignoring the public's wrath at the scandals surrounding Najib & family and the GST, and lacking adequate defence of them (regardless of whether the public anger had been justified, instigated or provoked). 

Whether correct or otherwise I invite MCA people to consider the above painful points.

But MCA still has deep pockets and I hope it will put that to good use to rejuvenate the party, bearing in mind the above criticism, namely, if in a coalition be an equal partner, choose good leadership, and stay clean.

But the old formula of either Perikatan or BN will no longer work, so think outside the box.