Nanyang Siang Pau, Editorial, 22-09-2014

Speaking at the Johor MCA liaison committee general assembly, MCA deputy president Datuk Dr. Wee Ka Siong had revealed the five-prong strategies that will help the MCA to resurrect, they include setting up of a 48-hour complaining channel, to recruit more young people to join the party, to set up central information system, advocating the Hi-Five but not Hi-Bye attitude, and to beef up communications between the higher levels and lower levels.

He said although MCA currently has hit rock bottom, it is still not hopeless, and the current turmoil among the three allied parties in Pakatan Rakyat as well as the PAS internal squabble is a good opportunity for MCA to stage a comeback.

One of the resurrection strategies mentioned by Wee Ka Siong is for the MCA members to discard the Hi-Bye attitude, this has hit the nail on the head of which some of the MCA leaders had shown their half-heartedness attitude towards their political career.

The so called “Hi-Bye” is a perfunctory acknowledgement when one happens to meet with friend, implying that a person is not sincere and sloppy in dealing with people and works.

MCA is a typical service-oriented political party, this image had not changed ever since the party’s inception until today. Hence, the general public especially Chinese community will normally use the services provided by MCA as a yardstick to measure the party’s performance. Whenever there is a problem, it is undeniably that the Chinese community will always prefer to approach MCA first to solve their problem, this continues to happen even until today.

During the March 8 and May 5 general elections, MCA suffered humiliating defeat, leaving with it a handful of MPs and state assemblymen. Those who had won in the election must have been excelling in their political service, or else they would not be able to have emerged as winner amid the political tsunami of changing government created by the oppositions.

Basically, most of the component parties of the Barisan Nasional are also service-oriented, this has been the winning factor for them in the general elections.

There are many prerequisite conditions to be a politician, but one condition that is indispensable is sincerity, without the sincerity to serve the people, no matter how excellent the politician’s academy qualification is or how eloquent he can speak, it will also be of no avail.

After the humiliating defeats in the last two general elections, many MCA members have become disheartened, some even planned to abandon their service centre, such an attitude is utterly not positive, without the service-oriented branding, it is even much more difficult for MCA to redeem its lost glory in the next general election.
Political party should make unremitting efforts to improve itself, now that the relationship of the three allied parties in Pakatan Rakyat has turned sour and PAS’s infighting has just begun, this is indeed a good opportunity for Barisan Nasional and MCA to counter attack, but for any political party to be sustainable, self-strengthening is the key element and not to rely on the weakness of its opponent.

The internal strife of PAS especially the conflict between its president Datuk Seri Hadi Awang and deputy president Mohamad Sabu, should serve as a lesson to other political parties, they should know that once there is contradiction between the number one and number two leader in the party, no matter how good the strategy could be, it is just like non-existent.

Original Source: 南洋社论：从政以诚意为本