MIC will compound the problems that already beset it if it allows the impression to gain ground that it exists purely on Umno’s sufferance, said a DAP leader.

Ipoh Barat MP M Kulasegaran said the opinion voiced by MIC vice-president M Saravanan - that party president G Palanivel ( right ) is the choice of Umno president Najib Abdul Razak as leader of the Indian-based party - would be very hard to live down.

“This is an admission by a party higher-up and will stick if the party president does nothing to refute it,” said Kulasegaran, who is also the DAP national vice-chair.

However, Kulasegaran doubted that Palanivel - in the current situation of turbulence in MIC - would be able to resolve the party crisis and inspire confidence that his leadership is not at the behest of the Umno supremo.

The lawyer-parliamentarian said it was already a herculean task to get the Indian community out of its pole position in all the indicators of social pathology besetting society.

“On several of the statistics that reflect social ills, Indians lead in numbers that are disproportionate to their percentage in the population (1.8 million among Malaysia's overall 30 million citizens),” observed Kulasegaran.

“These are numbers that are dispiriting in itself without it being compounded by the spectacle of factional strife in the party representing the community in the ruling coalition,” he said.

“If the present strife does not end, and if it seems that the party would require the ministrations of the Umno president to bring peace to the factions, then the impression would gain ground that MIC exists on Umno's sufferance,” he added.

Kulasegaran said this would compound the impression of the party as not bothered about its fiduciary duty to the Indian community because of excessive concern for the preservation of its leaders' self-interest.

He stressed that this impression would strip the party of any vestigial respect it still has, following a manifest failure to address the manifold problems that plague Indian Malaysians.

“This failure has been responsible for the sharp slide in the confidence of Indians in MIC, but the impression that the party continues on the sufferance of Umno would be to write its obituary,” opined Kulasegaran.