Will MCA finally grow a spine?

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The reason for MCA's downfall is very straightforward and simplistic: It was seen as UMNO's lapdog. With each election cycle for the past few elections, its representation grew smaller and smaller, yet it stuck to the same formula of kowtowing to UMNO.

Albert Einstein once said: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

MCA must have been insane because even as it became painfully obvious to everyone that the Chinese community had rejected MCA because of its subservient attitude towards UMNO, the powers that be within the party felt that it was a good strategy to continue kowtowing to its "big brother".

Perhaps the party's biggest humiliation was when Nazri Aziz likened MCA to “a wife who complains all day long that she was being abused, raped and not given enough food, but yet does not want to divorce her husband.”

As if to prove Nazri right MCA continued to slavishly kowtow to UMNO, unable to even contemplate the notion of leaving BN if UMNO didn't change its ways.

Now, MCA is down to just one single MP out of 222 in Parliament. Having been all but wiped out in GE14, you would think with nothing more to lose MCA would finally grow a spine.

Wee Ka Siong, the sole MCA MP seems to indicate there will be a change in how MCA deals with UMNO:

"Under our current leadership, whatever UMNO says today will no longer be our responsibility. Whatever (wrong things the) past leaders said, whatever (wrong things) former ministers said, I'm not footing the bill for them. Sorry. We won't do that."

Now that Nazri has gone into silent mode ever since BN lost, UMNO MP Annuar Musa has taken up the role of putting MCA back into its place, saying:

"This statement (from Wee) as though MCA had been propping up UMNO should be considered with an honest heart. Unless the 'stroke' (suffered by MCA) for the second time since GE13 was so bad that not only was MCA left crippled, but also unable to think! If that is the case, then MCA should prepare to buy their own gravestone."

Normally this kind of admonishment from UMNO will have MCA leaders scurrying to find ways to atone to "big brother". Let's see what Wee Ka Siong has to say in return.

We shall see.

One thing MCA, MIC and Gerakan never realized, until it was too late, was that collectively they actually had a lot of power in their hands. Even as their numbers started dwindling over the past few election cycles they hand one ace up their sleeve which is that they provided BN with the justification to call itself a multi-racial coalition. Without MCA/MIC/Gerakan, BN would be just UMNO + East Malaysian parties, which would be rather untenable.

Some might argue that UMNO + East Malaysian parties alone could have the numbers to control the majority in parliament but these people forget that UMNO doesn't just rely on Malay voters to win contests. There are not that many seats which are almost exclusively Malay. Certainly in the West Coast most seats that UMNO contests in have Chinese and Indian voters as well.

MCA, MIC and Gerakan supporters generally vote for UMNO candidates because they see it as voting for BN. If MCA/MIC/Gerakan were no longer part of BN, those voters would not vote for UMNO candidates anymore making it hard for UMNO MPs to win. It's very obvious that UMNO + East Malaysian parties alone would not be able to win a general election.

Yet, MCA, MIC and Gerakan never leveraged that power they had in their hands. Instead, the cowered and kowtowed to UMNO every which way they could. Why they never threatened to leave unless UMNO treated them better is anybody's guess. Nazri thinks it's the abused wife syndrome. Maybe he's right.

Whatever the case, MCA is now so downtrodden, it's literally got nothing to lose. It shouldn't be afraid of leaving or at least threatening to leave an abusive relationship. But will it? One can't help but wonder if it will instead continue to do the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Now, that would really be insane!