Ok, forget about the rest of the parties but if you think that the MCA did not have leaders who wanted to serve the nation but were constrained by the power-sharing nonsense that the DAP now finds itself grappling with and did nothing for the country, then you are truly drunk on the kool-aid.   

As former DAP whipping boy and someone Pua called a Chinese chauvinist, Ronnie Liu, said - “The ones (who have) tasted power, position and perks have lost sight of (their) values and virtues and why they’re in politics… This is not the way to go.”

DAP is already MCA 2.0

Since I have not noticed any Pakatan Harapan - especially DAP - big shots calling Anwar a Malay chauvinist, it is hypocritical to level the charge against anyone speaking up for their community while at the same time condoning the rhetoric and policies that favour one community over the other in the name of political compromise, while claiming we are all “Malaysians”.

And this has always been the problem with the DAP. It has to ignore the racialist and sometimes downright racist policies and rhetoric of its partner but has to police its own and ensure that the party apparatchiks conform to the multiracial/multicultural horse manure, which it does not have to defend.

I’ll leave the really nonsensical statement that the DAP “has not become part of the Chinese business and corporate landscape” alone because I assume that these types of statements would only be believed by the most naïve of the DAP base.

Ong’s claims that what people really mean when they ask if the DAP is turning into MCA 2.0 is if the DAP remains vocal on issues they raised before they got into power. By this definition, the DAP has already turned into MCA 2.0 because, of course, they have been silent on issues they were vocal about before they attained power.

From issues such as systemic reform, to M Indira Gandhi and Teoh Beng Hock, to Lynas, to Chinese education - you name it and the DAP has been quiet as church mice.

Once, DAP chairperson Lim Guan Eng, when debating with former MCA president and former health minister Chua Soi Lek, admonished the latter that the Chinese should not beg for scraps. 

However, when Lim became finance minister, we now know that the non-Malay community was given far less than the Malay community, but nobody in DAP said anything because it would spook the Malays and anger the Chinese community.

Furthermore, when Ong argues that the DAP did not manage its relationship with Bersatu, especially when it came to 3R issues, it points to how non-Malay power structures have to deal with lesser (in terms of vote share) Malay power structures to retain any kind of power and have to kowtow to Malay power brokers even though “betrayal” is all they get, which is then used by propagandists to firm up support for the DAP and which only advances racialists narratives.

Ong thinks that the DAP could have managed the relationship better, however, for party strategist Liew Chin Tong, DAP was a great friend to Muhyiddin Yassin and yet he betrayed the party.

As Liew wrote in the strange case of Muhyiddin Yassin - “In four years between 2016 and 2020, each time you asked DAP for help, we never failed you, we did everything possible to assist you. Playing the anti-DAP card to justify the existence of the Perikatan Nasional coalition would only make you seem hypocritical.”

Real and imagined fear

What we are dealing with here is a new political terrain where there are no truly progressive political parties in the mainstream establishment.

Yes, we could hope for independent candidates and outlier coalitions but people are too afraid to take any kind of chances, which is what these legacy parties are banking on. This is about fear.

The Malays feel that they are under siege, which is total bunkum because the political establishment does everything in their power to ensure that they are not spooked and that entitlement programmes disproportionately favour them. These are the so-called Malay rights that everyone keeps babbling about.

However, what the non-Malays fear is very real. The encroachment into our public and economic spaces. The way the religion of the state sometimes means children are kidnapped because of unilateral conversions. The way the state controls the words we can and cannot use. The way the state disenfranchises non-Malays from public education.

The tragedy is that while the DAP has electoral power for a myriad of reasons, this does not translate to political power. The same could have been said about the MCA. When it comes to non-Malay power structures, the tail does truly wag the dog.