Winning is the big picture
THE school bell rang and two 10-year-old girls raced to the canteen happily, holding hands.
Classmates Maizatul Mior Addie Nurul Aswad and Chan Xue Lee told us later that they are best friends. Maizatul helped to spell Xue Lee’s name. Xue Lee in turn pronounced Maizatul’s name in Mandarin.
Maizatul is among four non-Chinese among SJKC Sin Min’s 39 pupils. The other three are Indian.
This was in 2016 in Tronoh Mines New Village, a secluded 70-year-old Chinese settlement in Kampar, Perak.
The pupils there, like the two girls, know nothing about politics. But their friendship speaks volumes of moderation and multiculturalism in Malaysia, contrary to the negative picture portrayed by certain quarters of late.
In fact, some 20% of the pupils in the country’s 1,287 Chinese primary schools are non-Chinese.
Yet politicians and political commentators blame Chinese schools for the country’s increasing polarisation, and call for single stream schools – national schools only – in the name of unity.
The Malaysian school system is multistream, comprising national schools, Chinese and Tamil schools (known as vernacular schools) and religious schools – and it has been like this since independence.
An increasingly borderless world and the importance of the Chinese language in terms of commercial value has seen the language being taken up in increasing numbers worldwide, and Malaysia is no exception.
So a video of Umno’s Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz allegedly threatening to close down Chinese schools that went viral recently upset not just the Chinese community but also rational-thinking Malaysians.
The 64-year-old Padang Rengas MP has denied issuing the threat while campaigning during the Semenyih by-election when he was called up by police and investigated for sedition.
Nazri seems to have an urge to antagonise the MCA and the Chinese community – he has made other comments that have been widely circulated on social media. So much so that in the runup to Barisan Nasional’s supreme council meeting earlier this month, the MCA called for his sacking.
While that did not happen, Nazri did lose his position as Barisan secretary-general when deputy chairman Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan made Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor the coalition’s secretary-general on March 8.
Nazri’s appointment was deemed unconstitutional as he had been unilaterally appointed to the post in October by then Barisan chairman Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi. The MCA and MIC had not recognised it.
Some political observers see this “sacking” of sorts as Umno’s signal that it still values its partners in Barisan.
The coalition certainly needs all the goodwill it can get – it went into GE14 last year as a 13-party coalition and is now down to three parties. Only the three founding members, Umno, MCA and MIC, remain.
The MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong and the MIC president Tan Sri S.A. Vigneswaran were present at that March 8 supreme council meeting; however, the meeting did not arrive at a consensus to pave the way for the dissolution of Barisan, something that the MCA decided to push for as announced at its own annual general assembly on Dec 2 last year.
The Barisan Constitution requires a consensus among its partners for any such dissolution.
Dissolving Barisan certainly has its pros and cons. For one thing, it cannot be denied that the coalition has a strong network on the ground, one that has been built over the decades and that offers strong machinery during general elections.
The network has also enabled Barisan to provide effective services to the people, for example when dealing with flood victims. The bonding on the ground is evident despite all the talk of polarisation.
While some feel that MCA should quit Barisan and start all over again, the reality is that MCA will find it hard, if not impossible, to make a return solely on its own.
Politics, after all, is a numbers game. Malays and bumiputra comprise 69% of the population; Chinese, 23%; and Indians, 7% – these numbers show that the Barisan concept of power-sharing remains a viable option.
The challenge for any political party is how to thrive and win elections. That is the big picture that the MCA, like any party, has to keep in sight.