Friday, August 12, 2005

The Chinese Parties in Malaysia fighting it out

Two major Chinese-dorminant parties (MCA,Gerakan) in the nation will be holding their party elections very soon. The election for MCA will be quite different from those of the past 6 years,where all the senior positions in the party will see keen contests to take place.These posts used to be pre-arranged,negotiated and uncontested for the past 6 years as a result of the damaging Team-A/Team-B contest which almost split the party into two,and both sides agreed to stop the conflict in order to save the party.The structure of Team A/B is still faintly visible,but no open conflicts as before this year.Many people are fishing in the muddy water. One interesting aspect is that there emerged a third faction, the Team-C,which is headed by the son of ex-captain of Team-A,Ling Liong Sik.The junior Ling is eyeing the Deputy Chairman post in the MCA youth wing.What is interesting is that Ling was the mentor of incumbent party president,Ong Ka Ting,and now he is sending a blood hound after his own disciple! President of Gerakan ,Dr Lim Keng Yaik, is encouraging his preferred candidate Koh Su Koon (Chief Minister of Penang) to unseat his deputy Kerk.Maybe Dr Lim no longer fears the threat from DAP which used to portraited itself as the champions of the Chineses,particuparly in area of education,because Kerk was brought into the fold of Gerakan purely on his stregth as a Chinese educationsit activist.Apparently he has overstayed his welcome in the party.(He has been used). I had long detested Kerk for he has since sheded his original colours of a Chinese educationist activist,and seems to get along quite well with the establishment he used to confront.But the current contest brings out the scholar in him,I begin to like him again!

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