As the ongoing or continuing feuds between MCA and Gerakan are multi-dimensional and multi-faceted, it will last for a long time to come, especially in the view of the politically and intellectually insecure MCA leadership.

This is compounded by the apparently long-term ambition of Gerakan to be, at least, 'like MCA' or even to displace the latter as the more legitimate Chinese representative within the Umno-dominated Barisan Nasional.

Can Gerakan ultimately displace MCA as the more legitimate Chinese representative within the BN? On the surface, it is not impossible.

First, if there is no unexpected turn of events, Gerakan deputy president Kerk Choo Ting ( left ) who is a Chinese-educated lawyer is going to succeed the English-educated doctor Dr Lim Keng Yaik.

Kerk is also a former leader of the Chinese educationist movement, Dong Jiao Zong (DJZ) and thus has higher cultural, linguistic and educational credentials than MCA president Ong Ka Ting or his deputy Chan Kong Choy. Kerk is also much older than the duo.

Even if Kerk is somehow bypassed and Penang Chief Minister Dr Koh Tsu Koon becomes the new Gerakan president, the wide differences between him and the MCA duo still exist.

Like Kerk, Koh ( right ) is also a fomer DJZ leader, an organisation that Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad and the Umno-controlled newspapers condemn as 'extremist" and chauvinist'.

Besides, Koh, who is more fluent in Bahasa Malaysia and English, is a more experienced hand in managing governmental affairs as well as communicating with Malay civil servants.

MCA's Ong and Chan can never hope to equal or surpass Koh on these intellectual and bureaucratic qualities.

Matter of time

Second, it seems that if Gerakan continues to increase its Chinese leaders and members and project a more Chinese image on public issues affecting the community, it is only a matter of time that MCA is de-legitimised as the sole Chinese representative in BN.

However, for Gerakan to do this, it will mean it has to blatantly betray its founding ideal as a multi-ethnic party and it will have to sacrifice the interests and future of its Indian leaders and members.

Already, under the overbearing leadership of Lim Keng Yaik ( right ) and its overzealous attempt to endear itself to Mahathir's Umno, Gerakan has long ceased to be publicly recognised as a champion for democratic values, human rights, judicial independence and integrity, press freedom and other liberal causes against the semi-authoritarian ethno-nationalism of Umno and its ideological mirror-images MCA and MIC.

For example, Gerakan now supports the Internal Security Act (ISA) although there were dissenting voices from within in the past. It has also not been vocal on public issues involving the erosion of parliamentary democracy and human rights.

Without any Malay/Muslim leadership and membership to reflect a truly Malaysian identity, and having lost the liberal credential as well as confronting the problem of conscience of whether to abandon its founding ideal, Gerakan is now in a bottleneck.

Assuming it finally decides to go all out to strive to be an alternative MCA in the BN to escape from the bottleneck, it is still greatly disadvantaged by the fact that it lacks the number.

Moreover, the Penang-centric, technocratic and intellectual image of its leadership simply does not appeal to broader sections of the Chinese community throughout Peninsula Malaysia.

More vocal

Thus, it can only hope to be a better and more intelligent Chinese adviser than MCA to Umno but in the process of competition with MCA for Umno's ears and favour, Gerakan's posture as being 'more moderate' can only put it in a disadvantage vis--vis MCA that now attempts to be slightly more vocal on public issues affecting the Chinese community, such as the Suqiu, language switch and Vision School controversies.

As early as 1990, DJZ had distanced itself from its ex-leaders in Gerakan, implicitly or explicitly, claiming that Kerk, Koh and company have "sold out" their original mission of "going into BN and reforming it from within".

After the sacking and jailing of former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim who claimed to carry out the Malay/Muslim version of the same mission, many in the Chinese educationist movement have also drawn the lesson that the Umno-dominated BN cannot be reformed from within.

The ex-DJZ leaders in Gerakan like Kerk and Koh are now seen as "having been reformed by Umno".

Thus, the more Gerakan feels isolated from the base it claims to represent and overwhelmed by opinions in the Chinese civil society, the more it attempts to endear itself to Umno to survive.

However, while its overzealous effort to assist Umno in attacking Malay oppositionists will certainly antagonise a huge number of pro-Barisan Alternatif (BA) Malay voters, a much weakened Umno is simultaneously unable to deliver to it the Malay/Muslim votes it needs to offset the loss of both Chinese (pro-MCA as well as pro-BA) and Malay (pro-BA) support.

If it tries to out-MCA its rival, then MCA will have to do one-upmanship by being even more vocal on public issues affecting the Chinese community. This will generate a dynamic that Umno always conceptualises, fears and hates as, "Chinese chauvinism".

The perception of Umno appeasing "Chinese chauvinism" will in turn erode its ethno-nationalist elite support further.

Thus, the Umno and Gerakan combination may not generate a clear-cut win-win but messy lose-lose outcome, especially if the powerful factors of MCA's organisational jealousy and leadership insecurity in the triangular relationship are taken into account. A stronger Chinese-predominated Gerakan and closer Umno-Gerakan relation are secretly feared by MCA.

MCA's fear is compounded by what its dominant faction generally perceives as the interference of Umno (euphemised as "outsiders") into its protracted power struggle with Team B. Team B is suspiciously viewed as Umno's " surrogate" just like Tan Siew Sin's group in the late 50s, Lim Keng Yaik's caucus in early 70s, Michael Chen's camp in late 70s and Dr Neo Yee Pan's faction in the 80s.

Suspicion

Although the latest round of power struggle has ended on the surface to Team A's advantage, the suspicion that Umno would somehow use Team B leaders like Chua Jui Meng and Ong Tee Keat to be its "ears and eyes" in MCA and its top decision-making bodies seems to still linger on. They are seen to be Umno's "sleepers" in MCA, to be activated in the next round of power struggle.

MCA's dominant faction also seems to be wary of the Chinese secretaries in the prime minister's office and some individual Chinese businessmen who are seen to be another Chinese group that undermines its legitimacy and integrity as " the sole Chinese representative" by reporting and answering directly to the Umno president.

Moreover, it also seems that the fear of Team B mounting another challenge, again with Umno's tacit support or blessing, in the 2005 party elections also looms large, albeit quietly, in the minds of some ideologues and strategists of Team A. After all, immediately after the 2004 general election, the pressure for maintaining the "unity" of MCA and BN will not be great or burdensome

Seen in this light, MCA's candidate list for the coming general election will be an indication of the strategies of MCA's Team A and Team B as well as the top leadership of Umno for the post-election inter-party and inter-faction balance of forces. Umno will certainly attempt to include in the MCA list more Team B leaders, while Team A has to resist. Conventionally, it is the Umno president as the BN chairperson who decides.

The BN chairperson could, of course, also dilute MCA's power by giving additional seats to Gerakan, MIC and PPP. But who exactly will be the real Umno president and BN chairperson after October is still a point of contention for MCA's different factions and personalities.

It is quite clear that during the height of the MCA power struggle that while Team B (and Gerakan) sought patronage from Abdullah Ahmad Badawi thinking that he has a future interest in working with them rather than MCA's Team A, Team B's nemeses found Mahathir to be more powerful and influential in deciding the outcome.

Three assumptions

The 'cloak-and-dagger' game among Umno, Gerakan and MCA's Team A and Team B goes on, either publicly or stealthily, with no end in sight. However, whether it is Gerakan or MCA's Team A and B, their games or strategies are still nostalgically based on, at least, three critical assumptions:

One, Umno is still the pre-1999 Leviathan whose united top leadership could deliver majority votes of the unquestioning Malays/Muslims to them in the Malays/Muslim-predominated or ethnically mixed constituencies;

Two, all Chinese love and support Umno, MCA and Gerakan without questions asked, or minds of their own;

Three, all Malays/Muslims and Chinese who claim to be members of Umno, MCA and Gerakan will necessarily vote for the Umno-dominated BN in the general election.

If and when these and other critical assumptions are removed, many projected scenarios or outcomes will also change. Politics becomes lively again.

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.