Former MCA president Ong Tee Keat today lashed out at his successor Dr Chua Soi Lek for using subordinates in the party to chide him for his “inappropriate” letter to online news portals on Wednesday.

Ong, who is Pandan MP, said his letter was on Chua’s response during a recent media interview to calls that he resigns for his failure to deliver the Chinese votes in the Tenang by-election.

“While respecting Chua’s liberty to dodge comments on his infamous sex DVD scandal, I was least amused by his ‘No quarrel during Chinese New Year’ claim as my letter was to comment on his response to the resignation call after the Tenang by-election.

“Can’t he, with his current stature, differentiate between proper discourse and ‘quarrel’?” Ong said, describing Chua as “crafty” for assigning Transport Minister Kong Cho Ha, Deputy Finance Minister Donald Lim and Perak state executive councillor member Mah Hang Soon as his spokespersons.

Ong in his letter to the online portals said Chua, in snubbing calls that he quits over the lackadaisical support for BN from the Tenang Chinese voters, went on to chide the opposition that he would only listen to his members, not to others.

However, within hours of issuing the letter headed ‘Chua continues with his scheming ways’, Ong emailed portal editors asking that it not be used, saying it was “wrongly sent” as he had meant to send a file containing his Chinese New Year message.

In the letter, Ong had also said: “On the other hand, he seemed to have taken pride of his record of resigning three times in two years. From his utterances, it’s clear that he simply wanted to show the public that tendering resignation is no big deal to him.

“Chua should have told the public why he had to resign then. His resignation was prompted by his sex DVD scandal, not because of upholding integrity and principle over substantive matters of public interest.”

In separate statements, Kong Lim and Chua described Ong’s “attack” on Chua as inappropriate and called on him to respect the decision of the MCA delegates and the new office bearers who were elected in March last year.

Sex DVD scandal led to resignation

In his statement today, Ong said anybody who read his earlier letter would certainly find no correlation with the MCA party polls last year as the sex scandal and Chua’s resignation as deputy MCA president took place in early 2008.

While the “appropriateness” of his Wednesday’s letter was not for Kong, Lim and Mah to judge, they should have the courage to debunk the two incidents he cited if they were unfounded and illogical.

“Since Chua seemed to take pride of his record of resignation in the past two years, naturally this prompts us to revisit the case. It is a factual statement of mine, while stating that his resignation from the ministerial and party posts on Jan 2, 2008, was not linked to any substantive issues of public interest, but merely due to the expose of his immoral involvement in the sex DVD scandal.

“Then, what ‘inappropriateness’ are they (the MCA trio) talking about? Do they expect every MCA member, if not the public, to emulate the ostrich in burying its head in the sand or simply to delete the scandal from our public memory?

“Or do they imply that the March 23, 2010 MCA poll that returned Chua as the new president has the power of ‘political bleaching’ any blot in his past alleged immorality record retrospectively? Since when has the party degraded into such ill-perceived practice as ‘See-not, say-not and hear-not’?”

Ong also said that if Kong, Lim and Mah could ever convince the Malaysian public that the personal immorality of public office holders and national political leaders was permissible and acceptable in the country’s partisan politics, then surely Chua’s stigma would, as they wished, vanish.

“This would appear more convincing and productive, as compared with mere gagging and censuring me, if not banishing me from the battered party.

“Since Chua had openly disdained my earlier comments on several public and party issues by using a Hokkien saying, ‘Talking to satisfy your own consumption and enjoyment’, then any claim of ‘inappropriateness’, as was remarked by the MCA trio, would appear somewhat irrelevant and unnecessarily contradictory,” he added.