For the sake of "peace and stability", MCA has imposed a no contest

rule for divisional, state and national elections. My goodness, what kind of solution is this? Where is the justice for ordinary members? Where is the so-called democracy?

When Umno made the decision for the top two and central committee posts, MCA members were already agitated. Can MCA grassroots and divisional and state level leaders hold their fury now that they learn there is going to be no contest even for all posts except branch level ones?

Indeed, the better solution would be to clean up the membership list, and approve fairly all the genuine applicants who want to join MCA. And then call for the elections to be done fair and square so that the winners and losers will know where they stand immediately.

Postponing the election for another three years is just like giving some painkillers to a patient to stop the pain temporarily, instead of giving the medicine to cure him.

How to clean up the membership list? Very simple. Just publish the MCA membership data on the Internet, newspapers, directory, or put up the lists at all branch offices so that the public and MCA members could check whether they have been recruited willingly or unwittingly.

Strike out names obtained dubiously. If members are "imported" or "exported" from one state to another state, contact the respective members to verify their status. It may take a few months to do this, but a cleaner membership list may be finally evinced.

Now, by pressing the "pause" button, the divisional and state-level "grassroots" aspirants from both Team A and B are punished. The incumbent are punished too since a lot of them may aspire for higher positions.

Politicians should be able to accept victories and defeats. But by coming to a "no contest" compromise  with the exception of the top-level leaders from both teams  I do not see that this will benefit the remaining million rank-and-file members.

There are a few more pertinent questions too. Like who will be the candidates for the next general election? What about those who lost in the last election, but still keep their divisional posts this time? Should the opportunity be given to other new candidates? Who will be the MCA candidates for the local government posts such as city councillors?

I believe many MCA members share my view: Why are members' right to elect and be elected taken away just because the top leaders agree to first keep their respective posts in the party, then sit down to talk about how to share other posts?

We grassroots members feel very shortchanged by the no contest decision. We were asked to sign for or against this and that, attend thousands of meet-the-leaders functions, spend money to buy lunches and dinners for our supporters. Now, they want us to forget about all our differences, be united, and not to contest for the sake of harmony.

Ironically, do the enforced calm and the retention of the top national leaders in their posts bring peace and stability to MCA? If this is logical, then all the leaders should keep their posts permanently. Now that the precedence is set, will the no contest ruling be enforced whenever such a scenario crop up again?

Maybe it is time for ordinary members like me to think whether we should just do something else in our life, instead of joining and trying to be active in Malaysian politics. I doubt how many of us would abide to the no contest decision.