The suddenly discovered need for the National Front (BN) to draft a set of "enforceable" rules to prevent elected representatives from party hopping within the coalition, certainly has the breakdown of basic trust between MCA and Gerakan in mind. However, its implications are more far reaching and comprehensive.

One, as a general set of rules to be drafted and implemented by the Umno-dominated BN, it cannot be only applicable to MCA and Gerakan because if other component parties are exempted, the rules will be seen as discriminative, unfair and unjust, thus creating more intra-coalition discontentment.

Two, the defections of elected representatives from one component party to another are not the only sources of intra-coalition tensions and conflicts; there are also the often unreported or little reported local incidents of intra-coalition defections of the leaders and members who are not elected representatives, which also cause inter-party mistrust, tensions and conflicts.

In Sabah and Sarawak, for example, intra-coalition defections have always been a norm. Thus, the proposed set of rule would most likely be hotly debated by component parties of the BN before a consensus that is acceptable to all could be reached.

MCA-Gerakan ties

Indeed, in the case of MCA and Gerakan, inter-party defections have been one of the major definitions of their relationship since the formation of Gerakan in 1968. In the initial years, Gerakan could really boost its multiracialism and idealism with a degree of credibility by simply displaying some big names like trade unionist V David, intellectuals Syed Hussein Alatas and Wang Gung Wu, Fabian socialist Dr Tan Chee Khoon and former MCA president Dr Lim Chong Eu.

The irony is that after overthrowing the MCA-dominated Penang government in 1969, Gerakan itself, under the leadership of Dr Lim Chong Eu, began to aspire to be a "MCA" itself. In protest, V David and Syed Husein Alatas left the party in 1971.

The process of transforming Gerakan into a Chinese competitor with MCA for Chinese loyalty, support and resources was accelerated with the mass influx of MCA dissidents led by Dr Lim Keng Yaik after the 1973 intra-party struggle. Lim, a top leader of the then MCA's Team B and a cabinet minister in the administration of Tun Abdul Razak (1970-1976), was actually sacked by the party.

In 1981, after another round of protracted and intense power struggle, another MCA Team B led by deputy president Michael Chen joined Gerakan, thus reinforcing Gerakan's "Chinese-ness". Chen, who retired as president of the Senate recently, later returned to MCA.

In his book, Government and Society in Malaysia (Singapore, Talisman, 1996), Australian political scientist Harold Crouch remarks that "the increasing Chinese-ness of Gerakan made it a natural home for MCA dissidents" (p 48).

A year later in 1982, some Chinese educationists from the Dong Jiao Zong (DJZ) like Dr Koh Tsu Koon, Kerk Choo Ting and Kang Chin Seng added to the "Chinese-ness" of Gerakan. The transformation of Gerakan from a multi-ethnic and idealist party for reform into an essentially Chinese and realist competitor against MCA within BN was almost completed by 1982.

The ritualistic reaffirmation of its multi-ethnic and reformist ideals, as well as the insertion of some token non-Chinese faces have not changed its new essence. It never even bothers to attempt to window-show Malay/Muslim representation at the decision-making level, however symbolic.

The new identity of Gerakan and its obvious intention to compete with MCA certainly threatens the latter, although a close relation between Umno and Gerakan, or the impression of it, can also be secretly exploited by MCA's ideologues and diehards among some Chinese "purists" as "evidence" of Gerakan's "racial treachery" as they did in the propaganda campaign against its own Team B during the early phase of the protracted power struggle.

In any case, there are now new dimensions to their conflicts that may last for many years to come, complicating the already complicated fights for seats, governmental positions and "the souls" of the Chinese.

Still schoolboys

For although MCA is still certainly larger and more powerful in terms of organisation and membership than Gerakan, the ascensions of Ong Ka Ting and Chan Kong Choy as the top two leaders of MCA have somehow diminished the status and standing of MCA vis--vis Gerakan in the eyes of the older generation of conservative Chinese elites.

Both Ong, 47, and Chan, 48, are much younger than Gerakan president Dr Lim Keng Yaik, 63, and his deputy, lawyer Kerk Choo Ting, 61. They are regarded as socially and politically "less experienced and skillful" than Lim and Kerk.

Lim, for example, was already a high-ranking MCA leader and a cabinet minister in the Tun Abdul Razak administration in the early 1970s when Ong and Chan were still "secondary school boys".

Right or wrong, from that class-conscious perspective and value-system of the old and conservative Chinese elites, the level and perceived quality of education also work to the disadvantages of both Ong and Chan vis--vis Lim and Kerk respectively.

To compensate for its numerical and organisational weaknesses vis--vis MCA, Gerakan has always pride itself to have "bigger" and "more" brains than MCA, whether in the Chinese or English language.

"MCA is now a big party but with 'small' leaders," opines one Chinese editor.

In these subtle clashes of personalities between the top leaders of MCA on one hand, and Gerakan on the other, MCA has not helped itself by creating media headlines of "chair-throwing" and "bomb-hoax", as well as allegations, counter-allegations and denial (and counter-denials) of its leaders linking to, or associating with triads, criminal gangs and international drug traffickers, loan sharks and even, in one case, multinational prostitutes.

Three long years of such public imaging is difficult to be erased or whitewashed overnight even by the most seasoned spin-doctors of the regime.

By contrast, top Gerakan leaders nowadays appear in public functions and the media with intellectual and technocratic looks and much cleaner, more publicly secure and less menacing images.

Being compatible

In any case, MCA has the numbers, organisation, money and the media that Gerakan seriously lacks, and which Umno loves to have more. These basic elements of political power are most likely deemed by "supreme realists" like the politically amoral Dr Mahathir Mohamad to be of more immediate and material importance to Umno's electoral survival in the short-run before the conclusion of the next general election.

However, how are the MCA images nowadays compatible with the spins that the next Umno president and prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is "clean", "religious", "strict" and "incorruptible"? These spins are said to be absolutely crucial for Umno to win back the hearts and minds of the majority Malay/Muslim voters in the their heartland, in the post-Mahathir era.

Like Umno, Gerakan also faces this dilemma of how to opportunistically exploit the financial and organisational resources of MCA for its own electoral advantages while maintaining, at least in public view, a safe moral distance from its negative images.

MCA, being always business-minded, certainly will not give away its resources to Umno and Gerakan without quid pro quo, like the opportunities for its controversial leaders and financial backers of dubious characters to be photographed together with top Umno and Gerakan leaders, like Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Koh Tsu Koon. How would these photographs later be used, or popularly interpreted, is worrying indeed.

In these circumstances or scenarios, MCA's meat is the poison for Umno and Gerakan.

Finally, many MCA leaders and members, with or without the factional tags, are still waging secret wars against one another to get nominated as candidates for the general election, as well as the party election in 2005.

Next final part: Umno's quagmire in MCA-Gerakan 'civil war'. Click

here to read Part 1.

JAMES WONG WING On is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia (SAM). Wong is a former member of Parliament (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily (now Sin Chew 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 (MPI) for 1998 and 1999.