Samy Vellu’s MIED claims could benefit Pakatan in Bagan Pinang vote

ARCHIVES 2009

By admin-s On Oct 4, 2009

(The Malaysian Insider) PORT DICKSON, Oct 4 — MIC president Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu may have given Pakatan Rakyat (PR) its best weapon yet to win over the 2,800 Indian voters in Bagan Pinang who are playing kingmakers in a tight contest.

An October 3 statement by Samy Vellu that there is no connection between MIC and MIED — which was always understood to be the MIC’s education arm — has shocked the Indian community and sparked a furore, with his political rivals and others all rising to condemn Samy Vellu.

The PR campaign has seized on the issue as campaign fodder against Umno, whose candidate in Bagan Pinang Tan Sri Mohd Isa Abdul Samad is facing Negri Sembilan PAS chief Zulkefly Mohamad Omar in a straight fight.

The Indian votes are important because PAS had a majority of votes in all five saluran or voting streams in the constituency that had predominantly Indian voters like in Bradwell and Atherthon estates.

Umno won in all voting streams where Malay voters are in the majority — a situation that leaves Umno to woo Indian voters, who are still smarting from alleged marginalization and discrimination, if it wants to increase its winning majority.

There is a danger that more Indian votes could flee to PAS, if PR intelligently exploits the issue, because of the furore that has been sparked by Samy Vellu’s statement that MIED is independent of MIC.

The Indian public is outraged by the statement because huge amounts of cash were raised from the Indian poor for the MIC’s education efforts.

In addition the government gave millions of ringgit in cash for the building and management of the educational institutions that all came under the MIED umbrella.

Indian voters are somewhat taken up with the actions of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak since he became Prime Minister in April and the promises he has made to right the wrongs in good time.

But these warming up to Najib is at risk as realisation sets in that the Indian public has been, in the words of a former MIC vice-president, “taken for a ride” over the MIED matter.

The October 2 report which made the front pages of the Tamil newspapers quoted Samy Vellu as saying there were no links between MIED and AIMST University.

The report quoted Samy Vellu as saying: “Both — MIED and AIMST — are NGOs set up by me in my personal capacity when the (Tun Dr Mohamad) Mahathir government excluded the Indian community from the mainstream and MIC could not do anything about this.”

Just because I happened to be MIC president, it does not mean MIED and AIMST belong to MIC,” said Samy Vellu.