Cornered MCA bares its fangs at UMNO

Sheeesh, I made a spelling error in my title and no one picked it up - c'mon guys, you're slipping ;-) should be 'bares' and not 'bears' fangs - hehehe, no wonder MCA doesn't have much of a bite - my bad

My blogging compatriot, Dr Darren Hsu posted an excellent analysis of what would be likely to occur when Education Minister Hishamuddin Hussein ‘warned’ the MCA for questioning DPM Najib’s statement that Malaysia has always been an Islamic state.

Darren wrote:

UMNO youth gave a warning to MCA to shut up, according to Malaysiakini.

I am even more confused. Isn’t MCA part of BN? If so, why not let them have a chance to speak up and at least win some votes back from their community? Aren’t MCA seats part of BN seats?

Issuing a warning to a fellow BN component party is not a wise move. If they keep quiet, it would appear to the Rakyat that they are weak and just followers of UMNO and that would cost them lots of votes and some seats. If they don’t keep quiet, what would happen? A public quarrelling between 2 BN parties?

I am confused that why can’t they just discuss all these in private, through the so-called proper channels, like they always insisted?

[…]

But when a warning is issued to MCA to shut up, it has actually pushed MCA to a corner without any more space to maneuvre. This will not auger well to MCA and by extension, would not auger well to the whole BN.

'Warn'? 'Shutup'? What terrible words to direct at a political ally. Hishamuddin must be badly brought up to be so totally insensitive and rude.

Indeed, as I commented in Darren’s blog: Even a cornered rat will fight back, and finally a cornered MCA has found its long missing backbone to say: ‘Nuff is ’nuff.

I came across a refreshing new back-stiffened MCA in a malaysiakini article titled ‘MCA not anyone's 'slave', says Youth chief’

It won’t do the BN much good when its two major component parties are squabbling in public. Nor will it be reassuring to the general public when the likely sequel to this acrimonious war of words will see Hishamuddin or one of those ambitious UMNO Youth hotheads drawing the keris with a threat to bathe it in MCA blood.

But I tell you what – it will do wonders for our economy in terms of tourism and foreign investments – if these fangs bearing contest continues, the wonder would be how far our national earnings would plummet.

With Hishamuddin’s outrageous and insensitive talk-down to the MCA, as if the MCA was a peon in colonial times to be told by Tuan to shut up, a normally compliant MCA had to do or die just like a cornered rat. And a cornered rat bites ferociously.

Wasn’t it Sun Tze, the ancient Chinese military strategist, who warned against cornering the enemy. I believe he wrote: "To a surrounded enemy you must leave a way of escape."

The strategist was advising that a cornered enemy would fight with all his passion and inflict consequential serious damage that would not be worth the reward of eliminating him.

Sure as hell Hishamuddin didn’t leave any escape path for the MCA.

UMNO has always felt it alone is the BN, and the other component parties are mere add-on’s. No doubt it is what people would term as the BN's primus inter pares or ‘first among equals’. But UMNO has over-focused on the ‘first’ and forgot completely about the ‘equals’.

The MCA has for years endured humiliation by a sometimes insensitive UMNO. I have often blogged that the MCA’s worst enemy is not the DAP but UMNO.

With each humiliation, the MCA sees its support base slowly slipping away, and small wonder when disgusted and shamed Chinese Malaysians cringed at the passivity of a compliant MCA. It was only in recent years that it had gradually clawed its way back.

While I am somewhat delighted to see the MCA regaining a bit of the backbone it lost years ago, I am not sure where we will be going with such serious acrimonious exchanges between the two major parties of the BN, with only 39 days to go to our nation’s 50th anniversary.