Kampar MP Chong Zhemin recently made a suggestion that MCA be dissolved and merged with DAP.
According to Chong, MCA is so weak that it is only surviving with the aid of Umno votes. Chong was likely referring to the fact that even the meagre two seats that MCA has in parliament was won in a Malay majority constituency. Considering how MCA no longer serves the Chinese community, Chong reasons, the best thing for MCA to do is dissolve and join DAP, rather than continue as it is.
Chong’s suggestion however, was dismissed today (April 4) by DAP secretary-general Loke Siew Fook.
“I don’t see the possibility of that happening,” Loke was quoted as saying in Seremban .
Loke also said that the idea by Chong represented Chong’s personal opinion which had never been discussed within the party.
Chong’s proposal was also rejected by MCA Youth information chief Neow Choo Seong, who said the two parties were like oil and water, which are fundamentally different in ideology and political approach.
Personally, while I can understand Why Chong made his suggestion, overall, I think the call for MCA to be disbanded is premature and without insight.
MCA might be weak today, but it is not without a function.
An identity group like the Chinese community in Malaysia, will in the end require two parties to represent it.
All identity groups in the world, other than the ones that are at war or facing challenges or difficulties, will have two parties to represent it.
If the Chinese community today overwhelmingly supports DAP, it is likely only because they had to concentrate their strength behind PH in order to bring down BN, which has been ruling the country since independence.
Now that BN has been toppled, the Chinese community might still overwhelmingly support DAP in GE16, out of sheer momentum and also perhaps goaded by the view that the Ancien Régime that they defeated in the 2018 and 2022 election, might still be lurking in the dark, biding its time to make a return, but by GE 17, they will likely relent and come back behind MCA once again.
The reason they will do it is because every identity group, will in the end, require two parties to represent it.
If the Chinese community does not empower another political party like MCA, and continue to concentrate their support on DAP, two things will happen.
The first is that internally, the Chinese community themselves are going to become so immensely disappointed and frustrated with the performance of DAP, that they are going to end up becoming disgusted with DAP.
When an identity group concentrates its support on just one political party, the expectation that it will have on that identity group will be so high that the political party is bound to fail the identity group no matter how well it performs.
MCA itself is currently facing disgust from the Chinese community simply because the Chinese community had supported it wholeheartedly, especially in the 2004 elections, when it won 31 of 33 seats it contested and nearly decimated DAP.
The concentrated support that the Chinese community put behind MCA in 2004 however, cause them to become so disappointed and disgusted with MCA’s performance after it received their overwhelming support, that in the 2008 elections, MCA lost 16 seats that it had previously held, and managed to hold on to only 15 seats. In the 2013 election, it further lost another 8 seats to reduce its holding to just 7 seats. In 2018 and 2022, it only managed to win 1 and 2 seats respectively.
Today, the Chinese community is already starting to feel frustrated with the way that DAP has been serving it, precisely because of the overwhelming support that it has given to DAP in 2022. The frustration it feels might not be enough for them to abandon DAP in GE16, but by GE17, I am sure that the discrepancy between what they expect from DAP and what they will actually get from DAP, will be so high, that a large number of the chinese electorate will return to MCA, out of frustration towards DAP.
Also, as long as the Chinese community concentrates their support behind DAP, the non-Chinese community in Malaysia, especially the Malays, will subconsciously feel that the Chinese are taking a warlike posture against them.
An identity group only concentrates its support behind one political party when it is in a warlike or aggressive state. While the non-Chinese community might subconsciously be able to understand why the Chinese need to focus their support behind DAP when they had to bring down BN, but now that BN has been brought down, the longer the Chinese concentrate their support behind DAP, the more will they be possessed with the suspicion that the Chinese community are intending to act in a hostile manner against them.
Much of the tension that we see in recent times between the Chinese and the non-Chinese, especially Malay community, likely has to do with Chinese community’s overwhelming support of a single party as its cause.
It is only when the Chinese community spreads its support between two parties, that the tension between the Chinese and the non-Chinese, especially Malay community, will dissipate.
Considering all this, I doubt that it is wise, practical, functional, necessary or good for MCA to merge with DAP.
Rather, I think MCA just has to wait for one or two more elections, before its electoral fortunes start to improve. It is also likely necessary and good for MCA’s electoral fortunes to improve, for it is only if its electoral prospects improve, that not only will the tension between the Chinese and the non-Chinese community in Malaysia reduce, the Chinese community will find its prospects and interest best served too,
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