Saturday, December 14, 2013

Ong Tee Keat for MCA President

A couple of months ago, in the 13th General Election that was held on 5 May 2013, the Malaysian Chinese Association was served the "termination letter". The final warning was given in GE 12 but no one bothered I guess....never mind.

Do not even talk about other community's trust, respect or views on MCA. It was clear that the Chinese community didn't like the Government and MCA at all in the past 8 years..

When you walk into a mini market owned by a Malaysian Chinese, they reminded the people "wu ling wu, huan zhen fu" (505, change the Government).

When you sit in a coffee shop and enjoy your plate of chicken rice, again people were talking about "wu ling wu, huan zhen fu" (505, change the Government).

The Chinese community was unhappy about the state of our education, crime and corruption. Seriously, who likes it when we pay 10%, 15% or 25% income tax and the next year you read in the audit report that someone over paid for wall clocks or scanners?

Thankfully this year, the Chief Secretary and the Auditor General launched this:





It is a dashboard tracker of all the "black holes" in the Audit Report, status of the report, action against it, Ministry responsible. This is a positive direction, I believe. You can check it out here - Dashboard


But that's not enough to win the Chinese community back to MCA.

Let me share a little bit about the aging party. I was invited to an MCA dinner once in ... 2010. If my memory serves me right,  I remember noting that out of the 30 tables there that night, there were only 2 tables of youths. The rest were senior citizens well above 50. I am not being disrespectful but you get what I mean. The two tables of youths weren't exactly role models either. They didn't look like they went to university. Only one man did, I know for sure, and that was the former MCA Ipoh Timur candidate - Dr Liew Mun Hon.

I felt out of place as my Mandarin was poor but the Youth Chief was kind enough to help me settle down with the food and checked on me from time to time.

During the Tee Keat - Soi Lek battle in 2010, I was also in Wisma MCA. I was very interested in MCA politics and I do support Tee Keat. The personal assistant invited me and a few others to Wisma MCA on election day. I saw busloads of MCA Central Delegates, members and family that will determine the future of the party. Well, to be honest, while I was there, I didn't get the feeling that I was walking around with professional, young, energetic wage earners. If you know what I mean.

At the end of the day, the Central Delegates voted for Soi Lek to be President and told Tee Keat to leave.

Then, in the 13 GE, Tee Keat was dropped from the candidates list in Pandan. Some genius must have produced a very good report to convince Barisan Nasional War Room and MCA that Ong Tee Keat is not a winnable candidate against Rafizi Ramli in Pandan but a relatively unknown guy called Garry Lim is.

Very good, the Party progressed well. *Clap* *Clap*

Today, we don't have anyone to look up to in MCA. I dare say MCA is talent-less. We don't even have a 'next generation' of leaders in MCA. Unless MCA HQ would like to prove me wrong? Don't bother. Never mind. They don't even know what their members are doing or working as now. 

More needs to be done. Post GE, the following were my Tweets on MCA to friends.




Simple things like the membership list needs to be critically evaluated.
  1. Do we have 1 million members?
  2. How many members are active, inactive, contactable, incommunicado?
  3. How many members are professionals, labourers, businessmen or karaoke guys?
  4. How many new members are we getting every year? 
  5. What is the education background of the members, the age profile, their profession?
  6. What is the rate of MCA members dropping out (old age, migration etc) vs intake?
I know, you know. The numbers are bad but here we are today with many leaders talking about posts and MCA assets. We see this in The Star news almost every month.

A decade or two ago, quite clearly, DAP knew they were like ants to the elephant foot of MCA. They stood strong and maintained a strong network. They focused more on graduates who will eventually become professionals and merely breadwinners, not businessmen like MCA. That worked.

In fact, whilst doing so, the Party created idols at every age group along the way and groomed them. Today we have stars like Liew Chin Tong who came out top in the recent DAP election - surpassed even the Lim Dynasty, Karpal Dynasty. 

Just like airlines that aim to reduce the age of their fleet, MCA needs to do the same. Otherwise, how do you keep up with times? Look at our social media channels.

I want to know who manages the Twitter handle @MCAHQ. I don't think anyone in MCA is handling this. My guess is only 5% of MCA members are on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

This is most probably outsourced to a private media company or amateur. Otherwise, how do you explain the laziness of the handler? He or she released the same tweet using 3 different accounts - @BN4Malaysia, @AhJibGor4Life and @MCAHQ.

Be professional and unique please.




We are now 7 days away from the 2013 MCA party election. The same old 2,000-plus delegates will once again decide the future of the Party.


At 1000am in ZON All Suites Residences today 14 Dec 2013, Ong Tee Keat unveiled his 2013 MCA President Campaign Manifesto.



In his bid to comeback as MCA President, Ong Tee Keat has outlined 3 Principles and 8 Initiatives in his manifesto. You can check them out later when it is uploaded in his website HERE .

One of the interesting remarks that caught the attention of many was this:

MCA is not a racist party. MCA is just structurally communal based. 

This is true. The party has reached out to all communities and has never been race based in their assistance to the people. Ampang people (Indians, Malays, Chinese, you name it) were present to show their support to Ong Tee Keat.





There was also a question from a reporter for Ong Tee Keat's views on MCA politics and running mate. There were talks that Chua and Liow's camp are talking about "unity" while Gan Ping Sieu is teaming up with Donald Lim. Tee Keat explained that MCA Presidential election is not like the American system. He is not interested in running mates. In MCA's context, it means only one thing - horse trading. Tee Keat is a principled man and quite clearly, he is not interested in such backdoor votes trading deals.

This is true. MCA's system is too feudalistic. If the party had kept Tee Keat as President in 2010, we will certainly put DAP and PKR to shame with 1 member 1 vote and direct elections.

21 December - MCA Decides. #otk4mcapresident. The destiny of MCA lies in the hands of 2,386 Central Delegates.


If there is one man in MCA that Malaysians especially the Chinese community will support, it is Ong Tee Keat.

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