Fall from grace is a misadventure I would not want even my worst enemy to suffer from. Such is the impact of the fall that it cripples your ego and taunts you emotionally. MIC leader S Samy Vellu is undergoing unprecedented challenges and the damage of the fall to come will be colossal to his very being. It is baffling how he is able to still put up a brave front.

With voices screaming and streaming in from every direction for him to leave, Samy Vellu is hanging on to hope, for that hope has become his life.

Wanting and being wanted are very subjective depending which side of the fence you are on. Samy Vellu’s claim that he wants to be in power because his supporters want him is a spin tale the people will not buy anymore. The supporters on the other hand say that the leader wants to be in power and so the supporters ‘have to want him’. This chicken and egg story has gone stale.

Samy Vellu is obsessed with power, a self- proclaimed eminence with the total devotion showered on him by the leeches who have been feeding of him. At his age now, wealth and money are of no value. With just absolute power, he nourishes his ego and soul.

Who is responsible for Samy Vellu rising to such an authoritarian figure? It is the MIC members who had ‘fed’ him till he grew to the bloated self he is now, gloating in ecstasy that he has the support of MIC members?

Can we blame the MIC members who, after all, have been feasting of Samy Vellu and so the only logical thing to do would be to sustain him for continuous supply.

The very people who have been bought or brought in by ‘victory’ into the various portfolios in the MIC in the recent elections have in more than one way spoken of a need for change at the various platforms.

Listening to such political sermons, you would have for a moment thought that these great minds would have acted wisely to do what is best for the Indian community, ie to purge MIC of deadwood.

That did not happen for there was not a single sane person in MIC who could stand up and say that the time was up for Samy Vellu. Individuals who stood up were trampled on by the bigger forces, but together, if the individuals had stood their ground, we could have seen significant changes in the last MIC general elections.

Now, having placed people of his choice in the top positions in MIC, Samy Vellu has nothing to lose when or if he steps down. MIC will still be dancing to his whims and fancy. We have apple-polishers for a deputy president and vice presidents who are like the opera characters, play-acting according to seasons.

Meanwhile, another Indian-based party has emerged and will be endorsed by the prime minister soon. Let me ask a rhetorical question, do we need another race-based party in our midst? This question has popped up time and again but no answers are forthcoming.

Since the beginning of its downfall from March 2008, the MIC and its various wings have done nothing for the Indian community. But you definitely see more Indians driving luxury cars, owning homes in elite areas, running gas stations or running national service camps and they all have one thing in common - they must be his friends or one-time friends.

The re-branding exercise in MIC started with lots of pomp and splendour but it died at the launch. Many branch leaders are totally in eclipse as to what the re-branding was and is all about.

The women, youth and Puteri wings, in the meantime, are immersed in their own anguishes, forgetting that they have a job to do apart from lending support to Samy Vellu and his quirky and pesky political will.

The party leader is holding on to a cruiser with no compass and in this state of affairs, how can he be the source of direction to the various party wings?

It is no secret that in MIC, we have only one leader and the rest are followers and so we have the Wanita head, the Puteri head and the Youth head- all heads with no brains. A brain is worth little without a tongue and these heads’ silence for too long now speaks volumes.

Samy Vellu’s exit from MIC, if it is happening any time soon, will not change anything within MIC and its relevance to the Indian community. His cronies are planted in every nook and corner meaning it will be pay-back time for a long time to come.