The vast majority of MCA members are not actively involved in politics but join the party to lend their support to leaders who are willing to lend their time to continue to forward the Chinese cause and help to protect the rights of the Chinese in the country.

Lets also be a little bit more realistic. Hundreds of thousands of people die each year. Of those who are members of the MCA, do you think that their next of kin would bother to write to the MCA to strike off their names from the list? As long as their branch chairperson pay for their membership subscription, the MCA headquarters would continue to recognise them as valid members. Hence, it is near impossible to keep a perfectly clean list.

If however one feels so strongly about being a member of MCA, one should go and check the membership list to confirm ones status or have ones name struck off. One can do this not only during election time but throughout the year. It is that simple.

Making unsubstantiated allegations in the media about phantom members is ruining the partys image. Let us also not allow those who are trying to bring down the name of the Chinese Malaysian succeed in doing so.

On the other hand, we also have to be realistic about politics. There will definitely be a few unscrupulous people in MCA who would use anothers identity card to bloat the membership list. Although not encouraged by the party, the scam is not easy to stop.

When a branch chairperson submits applications to the MCA HQ, the function of the HQ is to make sure that the applications submitted are properly filled, the IC shows the holder to be a Chinese Malaysian and that the applicants are not already members. It is not their duty, not to mention being highly impractical, to call up every applicant to verify their identities.

In the interest of fairness, party president Dr Ling Liong Sik has allowed the full membership list to be displayed at various branches, divisions, states and at party headquarters for an extended period of 21 days as opposed to the norm of five days. For the sake of transparency he has also created a separate list of the 135,000 new members who joined this term. What more does Team B want? It would seem to me that they will only stop when they have things totally their way.

Team B claims to have found phantom members in the membership list but to date have yet to prove it. Could it be that they are just as guilty? That the branches aligned to them are as riddled with phantoms?