YOURSAY | ‘Begin with getting rid of deadwood leaders.’

BOBBYO: Defender of the Indians. This tag or belief started declining after the Maika scandal and when the late party president S Samy Vellu took over the party’s helm.

Many Indians felt betrayed, as the shares that were supposed to save Maika, especially the 10 million Telekom shares were hijacked by certain unscrupulous politicians.

Indians paid a heavy price for investing in Maika. They had borrowed heavily, thinking that they like Amanah Saham Nasional (ASN), will enjoy dividends like the Malays were given.

From that time, it was no turning back to MIC. The leaders did nothing to salvage the situation. Instead, it showed that they were enjoying the perks and benefits of their positions. Besides enjoying the corrupt facilities.

Hardly speaking out as Umno was stamping its authority over every issue, including the rights of the Indians. Educational places were slowly being reduced. Government positions also came scarce, except the lowly paid positions were given. Even the temples were being demolished.

Their schools were not properly maintained as most of the budget was diverted to maintain the Malay schools as well as national schools. Indian political leaders were more concerned with defending their positions rather than speaking out for their community.

This gave rise to the opposition politicians to be more vocal. As time when by, MIC lost a lot of Indian support.

Today, MIC president SA Vigneswaran and deputy M Saravanan do not attract support, as their reputation is already damaged among the Indian citizens. If MIC wants to reset its goals in the future, then it is time to get rid of the baggage.

Get new leaders in position and if possible, start working with other parties. Leaders first need to build up their record, speak out and reinvent their reputation like the young politicians in Muda. Even as a newbie, they have managed to at least win some positions in the political arena.

So, MIC must start from scratch as there will hardly be any positions waiting for them in the next elections unless their leaders can prove that they are worthy to be chosen.

VioletCondor6908: The winds or storms of change, did not only blow against MIC, and MCA but its forces blew against Umno too. The past nine months on the Malaysian political scene prove this.

One serious issue which hundreds of supporters or voters of these three parties, could not understand nor tolerate, was the endemic and prevalent amassing of wealth in the billions, by some political leaders.

Several became phenomenally rich, but the ordinary Ahmad, Ah Beng and Ramasamy were still struggling with their meagre incomes/ earnings and riding a motorcycle or an old Proton or Kancil. They looked for an alternative, and found Bersatu, DAP, PKR, Amanah, among others.

It was solely due to extreme corruption that Malaysians were turned off, by the traditional, popular political parties of the pre and post-Merdeka era. The big question remains.

Will these new parties, and the unity government, with Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, stamp out corruption, that may gradually envelop their leaders and be like Singapore, where even a whisper of corrupt practice, can land one in the powerful grips of the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB)?

Knucklehead: MIC is akin to “flogging a dead horse”. The party refused to give up as there are lots of “free money” to collect every time an election nears.

Same with many irrelevant political parties, it was a very BN culture which others follow. Many of them don't have a decent job and live off their “election duit (money)”.

Wasted souls, they can't contribute anything to the country. They should just be gone.

Apanama is back: It is all about change. Everything changes, except the word change. First, Gerakan refused to change, now we have MIC. Next will be MCA. Later, it may be Umno. If you observe carefully, people and voters are changing but the above parties refuse to change. They still stick in the past.

Why past? Because the leaders are also from the past. We need a young person to helm the party to be an agent of change. Now we have old deadwood. All these parties are detached from ground reality. They do not know and refuse to accept the change.

Therefore, better close shop.

The above is a selection of comments posted by Malaysiakini subscribers. Only paying subscribers can post comments. In the past year, Malaysiakinians have posted over 100,000 comments. Join the Malaysiakini community and help set the news agenda. Subscribe now.

These comments are compiled to reflect the views of Malaysiakini subscribers on matters of public interest. Malaysiakini does not intend to represent these views as fact.