COMMENT | The MCA-fication of DAP

COMMENT | The generation that has seen the DAP’s trolling of MCA leaders (for wearing the songkok, among other things) throughout the post-Independence years must be chuckling at the way the two political parties have now changed roles.

The picture of DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang wearing an ill-fitting songkok over his helmet of hair accepting an honorific “Tan Sri” - something the DAP said they would never ever do (“unlike the MCA leaders…”) just about sums up this comic transformation of Malaysian politics.

If an apology is all it takes for DAP leaders to assume their new role as the lesser partner of Umno, that seems like a small price to pay for the historic compromise they have made in terms of hanging up their past manifestoes to dry in the Malaysian sun.

Like the role MCA played during the heyday of the BN, DAP has put in abeyance their championing of equality, democracy, and human rights using the threat of “worse racialism” as their excuse.

Their great leader even went so far as to negate all that he had said about the Mahafiraun (“I never said Dr Mahathir Mohamad was corrupt!”) after the great dictator made his son a minister after GE14.

DAP’s “Malaysian Malaysia” was supposed to keep politicians out of publicly funded investments since it leads to poor accountability but ever since GE14, they have been part of the cosy arrangement allowing politicians to actively participate in public enterprises.

The acceptance of an Umno leader facing multiple corruption charges as deputy prime minister would have been met with wild derision by the old DAP leaders, but how could they do otherwise when, earlier, a top DAP leader had insisted on hanging on to his ministerial post while facing corruption charges?

“Malaysian Malaysia” now coexists with “Malay Dominance”.

Too many broken promises

The most revealing and distressing initiative of all during the brief Pakatan Harapan rule after GE14 was the so-called “Malay Dignity Congress” with its racist resolutions and which then prime minister Dr Mahathir patronised, continuing the New Economic Policy in the form of the new “Shared Prosperity Vision”.

And as this short rule ambled along, it consistently failed to fulfil manifesto promises and voter expectations in numerous ways.

We witnessed the flip flops over the Harapan promise to abolish toxic institutions and laws, such as the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act (Sosma) and other detention-without-trial laws in the country.

On top of all that, we saw a disturbing trend of autocratic decision-making and policies symptomatic of the old Mahathir 1.0 era.

Bowing to “Malay dominance”, it was equally absurd to tell Malaysian Independent Chinese Secondary School graduates in 2018 that their UEC certificate could only be recognised in five years’ time.

This is a serious breach of promise in the Harapan GE14 manifesto since more than 80 percent of Chinese voters voted for Harapan because of this promised reform.

After GE15, DAP’s local government development minister, Nga Kor Ming, said he had more urgent things to do than implement the long-awaited local council elections.

This is perhaps the best example of the MCA-fication of the DAP. It was a typical response by MCA ministers in the bad old days when the DAP would challenge the MCA on their democratic principles.

The excuse of government debt as a reason to delay local government elections, which have been suspended in our country since 1965, is not acceptable. Reintroducing Local Government Elections is a simple matter of abolishing a provision under the Local Government Act 1976 and reviving the Local Government Election Act.

What could be more urgent and easily accomplished than that to give Malaysians the basic democratic right they won at Independence in 1957?

Time for new, democratic opposition

Having gone through the “Two-Front System”, we ended up in 2018 with the same autocrat who tried to implement the policies he had introduced in 1981.

The MCA-fication of the DAP has shown that the democratic principles of the former opposition party have been compromised by careerism and opportunism, “the new reality”.

Clearly, it is time for all who have hoped for real reforms in Malaysia to build a new progressive democratic opposition for a truly just, democratic, and sustainable future that BN, Harapan, and Perikatan Nasional have failed to provide. These include:

• Ending racism & racial discrimination in Malaysia, principally an end to the racially discriminatory New Economic Policy.  

• Needs-based and not race-based policies.

• Wealth redistribution for the 99 percent, including progressive fiscal policies to tax the top 1 percent such as higher marginal tax rates on income, capital gains, inheritance, and luxuries.

• Affordable public housing, health, transport, and education, including a living wage and rights for all workers, a reasonable pension at retirement for all and free tertiary education (means tested for the well-off).

• Reclaiming our public assets from privatisation, especially nationalising public utilities such as water and energy, and democratising the GLCs. 

KUA KIA SOONG is a human rights activist and a former DAP MP.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.

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