The ideological hardcores of MCA and loyalists of its president, Dr Ling Liong Sik, have every reason to laugh and celebrate.

For the negotiation team led by none other than Ling seems to have prevailed not only over Team B which was led by Lings deputy, Lim Ah Lek, but also the agents of Umno president and Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

While Team B MCA has agreed to call off the extraordinary general meeting (EGM) which was said to be the final platform where they could spill the beans and to expose all the wrongdoings of Team A, Ling and his faction are not fulfilling their part of the peace agenda compromise and insisted on going ahead with the party elections as scheduled.

According to Team B, it has made a commitment to the peace process initiated by Mahathir, and the decision of Team A and Ling to go ahead with the party election on the basis of the dubious and tainted membership list could be construed as an open and public, albeit subtle, defiance against Mahathir who is also the chairperson of the Barisan Nasional.

Team B looks heroic in the Umno-controlled newspapers for its amicable and controllable stand.

Generals without soldiers

However, Team Bs unilateral commitment without obtaining any quid pro quo may not go down well with its own grassroots and middle-ranking leaders. They may be demoralised by what they regard as the indecisiveness, timidity, malleability and even perfidy of their top factional leaders like Lim Ah Lek, Chua Jui Meng, Chan Kong Choy and Ong Tee Keat.

Some may decide to defect to Team A for self-preservation, while others may be pressured to continue to fight their own battles inside or outside the party.

In other words, the quartets unilateral commitment may erode their leadership within their factional rank and file. If nothing drastic happens in the next few weeks, Lim, Chua, Chan and Ong may become generals without soldiers. Who wants to invest hope in, and follow, leaders who are not perceived to be consistent, resolute and determined at critical moments ?

Team B leaders have no one to blame if they are wiped out by Team A in the coming party election because they have failed to see that Umnos meat could be their poison.

Most MCA members and supporters do not read the New Strait Times, Utusan Malaysia or Berita Harian . They usually read The Star, Nanyang Siang Pau, China Press and Sin Chew Jit Poh . Readers of Umno-controlled newspapers usually and normally do not have voting rights in the coming party elections.

Team As confidence

On the contrary, despite the widespread impressions and perceptions of Team A and its leaders being corrupt, Machiavellian and tyrannical, they are able to appear to be united, resolute and consistent in the pursuit of their objectives, regardless of the morality involved.

Politically correct or not, they most probably reason that as long as the party election is held in accordance to established procedures, rules and regulations, and the disputed membership list, they are going to win, and Umno would only and ultimately recognise and accept winners.

Within the framework of that political culture, whatever done in the process is not important as long as one wins. They can cite plenty of examples and precedence in the chaotic history of Umno to justify their reasoning alone these lines.

According to these Machiavellian lines of reasoning, the unilateral commitment made by Team B to Umno stems from a position of absolute or relative weakness, and not from any altruistic commitment or moral choice.

Without sufficient support within MCA, Team B has to appease and pacify, and be agreeable to Umno at all cost in order to obtain the dominant BN components political support to countervail the overwhelming power and influence of Team A.

Team A also probably knows that journalists and writers in the media would kowtow to it once it wins the party election with overwhelming results and is accepted by Umno again as a partner of common interests. Come next general election, journalists and writers, in Malaysia as well as Singapore, now critical of Team A will have to paint rosy and saintly pictures of the same Team A leaders who control MCAs electoral machineries and financial resources.

Moreover, it seems that strategists of Team A still reckon that the memory, collective or individual, of ordinary people and voters is short, and the dominant political behaviour of Malaysians, especially the Chinese, Indian or other non-Muslim minorities, is to appease or bandwagon with, but not confront or balance against, any power or threat.

Note : This is the first of a two-part analysis. The second part will be published tomorrow.

JAMES WONG WING ON is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia (SAM) which produces the subscriber-based political report, Analysis Malaysia . Wong is a former member of parliament (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily. He read political science and economics at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. While in Sin Chew , he and a team of journalists won the top awards of Malaysian Press Institute for 1998 and 1999.