According to Nov 25 reports in Sin Chew Daily and Nanyang Siang Pau, MCA vice-president Chua Jui Meng attacked Gerakan president Dr Lim Keng Yaik for "publicly demanding" MCA to expel two of the party's controversial Penang state assembly representatives.

Chua, who is also health minister and a prominent MCA Team B leader, said that the case should first be referred back to MCA's "internal meetings for discussion" and the controversial duo "should also be given an opportunity to explain".

Last Friday, two MCA Penang state assembly representative Lim Boo Chang and Tan Cheng Liang abstained from voting against a DAP-sponsored motion in the Penang state assembly seeking to shelve the controversial Penang Ring Road Project. The act has seen been seen by Umno and Gerakan as "indiscipline" and "defiance".

Umno deputy president and deputy chairman of Barisan Nasional Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was later quoted as saying that the action of the MCA duo has set a very "bad precedent" and they face the prospect of being "expelled".

On Sunday, both the pro-Umno Utusan Malaysia and MCA-friendly Sin Chew Daily reported on their front-pages that Gerakan leader Keng Yaik had "publicly demand" MCA to expel Boo Chang and Cheng Liang.

The Gerakan president, a Dublin-trained medical doctor, is himself an ex-MCA leader who was sacked from the party in 1972 for organising activities deemed to be threatening to the party top leadership under Tan Siew Sin.

Links to communist elements

Although appointed by the then Umno president and Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak to be a minister in charge of the affairs of the Chinese-predominated new villages as well as "psychological warfare", Siew Sin and his conservative supporters publicly attacked Keng Yaik (photo) for associating with groups that "had been infiltrated by left-wing and communist elements and become too narrowly chauvinistic". (see Heng Pek Koon, Chinese Politics in Malaysia - A History of the Malaysian Chinese Association, Singapore, Oxford University Press, 1988; p 266)

In 1973, Lim crossed over to Gerakan and was elected leader of the relatively new party seven years later.

As if history was repeating itself, one of the controversial duo in the present crisis, Boo Chang (photo), is a trilingual lawyer who rose to the rank of Penang Gerakan Youth chief before crossing over to MCA after the 1999 general elections.

Boo Chang's late father was a founding member of Penang Gerakan and is said to be instrumental in assisting the party to defeat MCA in the 1969 general elections which saw the second largest component party in the then Alliance (forerunner of BN) losing the post of chief minister.

Thus, while party president Keng Yaik has always been seen by MCA as some kind of a "traitor", he himself also regards Boo Chang likewise. This is more or less a case of the pot calling the kettle black. This, and many other similar cross-overs between Gerakan and MCA, usually add fuel to fire to the uneasy ties between the two coalition partners.

Language controversy

The six-month-old language switch controversy has also intensified the secret rivalry between MCA and Gerakan. Although both parties appear to be united in opposing the Umno proposal to teach Science and Mathematics in English in all primary schools beginning next year, MCA also hopes to outdo Gerakan in term of being 'more Chinese' by moving closer to Dong Jiao Zong (DJZ) emotively.

Although Gerakan's top leadership is also teaming with ex-DJZ leaders like Penang Chief Minister Dr Koh Tsu Koon and party deputy president Kerk Choo Ting, it is constrained in the game by its self-professed multiethnic identity and membership. Moreover, president Keng Yaik seems to share Umno's perception of political threats to the regime more than any MCA leaders, and he publicly attacked DJZ recently using a language and tone similar to Dr Mahathir Mohamad's.

Perhaps by choosing to contrast it own 'moderate Chineseness' with the 'Chinese chauvinism' of MCA, DAP and DJZ, the Gerakan president hopes to 'outshine' MCA within the Umno-dominated ruling BN coalition. There is, however, a certain degree of embarrassment on the part of ex-DJZ leaders now in Gerakan when their organisation of origin are under fire from Umno, the pro-Umno media and their own party leader.

Seen in this slightly larger context, the polemic among Umno, MCA and Gerakan over the 'defiance' and 'indiscipline' of Boo Chang and Cheng Liang (photo) in Penang, and what actions should be taken against them, has definitely assumed a nationwide dimension. Partisan emotion, like financial meltdown, has contagion effects.

Defender of the party

How does MCA's Team B fit into this picture of 'warring kingdoms'? It seems that the public attack by party vice-president Chua Jui Meng on Gerakan's Keng Yaik has indicated the preparedness of Team B to project an image of 'defender of the party' against its traditional 'external enemy'.

The rebuilding of this image is crucial for Team B because Ling's Team A has rather successfully portrayed its rival faction as "a group of internal traitors" and "pro-Umno" since May last year when leaders like Chua sided with Umno and Gerakan in publicly criticising Ling for taking over two Chinese-language newspapers .

The rebuilding of the image of being 'defender of party's dignity and interests' is certainly the first stage of a strategic regrouping of Team B and re-entry into the factional battlefield within MCA. It can be expected that more middle- and low-ranking Team B leaders would follow suit and attack Gerakan, and even Umno, to bolster the image.

Umno's strategists would probably allow it as a 'show' as long as it does not get out of control. Of course, there is always the possibility that the micro-management of this highly delicate operation would fail as it is now the age of information revolution.

However, it is highly unlikely that top Team B leaders would join in the any public attack on Umno conducted by the lower ranks of their comrades. They have to keep in good relations with the dominant party in BN, as Gerakan does, if they hope to be able to replace Ling's team in the party and the government.

Battle on two fronts

Seen from these perspective, Ling's MCA is now confronted frontally by an Umno-Gerakan alliance, and a regrouping Team B at its rear. However, Ling is still not without leverages and short-term hope.

His dominant faction in MCA still controls the party's powerful central committee (CC), a large grassroot organisation, two Chinese and one English newspapers, a broadcasting company Rediffusion which operates two radio stations 988 and RED 104.9 as well as three private universities, which, if managed with care and prudence, generate cash and electoral funds.

Mahathir, the supreme realist, probably still need all these for Umno in the coming general elections. Above all, he needs Chinese votes for Umno. .

Thus, if Ling wants to save the controversial duo from being expelled, Ling still possesses the leverages or effective ways and means to do it. Of course, Ling could also choose to sacrifice Boo Chang and Cheng Liang as a gesture of goodwill for a MCA-Umno rapprochement, if he thinks that the emergence of a slightly more powerful Umno-Gerakan-Team B 'anti-MCA Axis' poses a real threat to his hold on MCA.

Ultimately, and as expected, the fate of the duo lies in the hand of Mahathir not Ling, Abdullah or Keng Yaik.

JAMES WONG WING ON is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia (SAM) which produces the subscriber-based political report, Analysis Malaysia. Wong is a former member of parliament (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily. He read political science and economics at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. While in Sin Chew, he and a team of journalists won the top awards of Malaysian Press Institute (MPI) for 1998 and 1999.