Chinese prepare funeral rites for MCA
Tanjak
Sin Chew‘s influential editorials are a good indicator of Chinese groupthink and the paper has openly called out Umno as racist.
Reminding its readers that Umno is a “monoracial party” with a “Malay-first agenda”, Sin Chew reports how the BN anchor party recently retreated to “their formidable fortress” of racial solidarity.
In the editorial ‘Back to square one’ (Dec 6), Sin Chew decried the Umno general assembly’s “flurry of racist remarks” – which to the Chinese media – is reflective of the party’s all too familiar “narrow old way”.
In fact, Sin Chew appears to regard racism as being “the intrinsic nature” of Umno and not merely an “expedient policy” for its current party president.
“Looking from this angle, Umno’s tilt towards racism is almost like the sun rising from the East or the water flowing from high to low — unchanging and inevitable,” said the editorial.’
Sin Chew then asked its audience to ponder whether monoracial parties are “still relevant in this country, and are they doing any good to the country’s future development?”
The ‘correct’ answer expected in response to Sin Chew‘s leading question is that Umno is increasingly becoming irrelevant while the DAP’s purported ‘multiracialism’ is the way to go.
And if considering, in Sin Chew‘s critical opinion, the monoracial Umno is now on the verge of obsolescence, what then does one make of the even more monoracial MCA? Six feet under already?
Going by the Sin Chew prognosis, Malaysia’s Chinese ought to get ready to throw MCA under the bus in line with the last ditch attempt by an utterly fed-up minority community to oust Umno.
Perpaduan ummah doesn’t sit well with Chinese
Another Sin Chew editorial penned a day earlier acknowledged the close cooperation witnessed among the Umno and PAS top leadership.
In ‘Deepening social polarization’ (Dec 5), the paper chose to state the obvious, that is “the direction of national politics towards a grand unity of Muslims”.
It highlighted the recent move by the government to take over the Hadi Awang private member’s bill (RUU355) as further proof that the two Malay-Muslim/Muslim-Malay parties are no longer hiding their political collaboration.
Sin Chew worries that “Umno’s continued stress on religious values will only push the Malaysian society closer to Islamization, creating entrenched polarization between the country’s Muslim and non-Muslim societies”.
The truth is that Umno has always stressed on religious values.
It was first prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman who established Perkim and served as the body’s patron as well as personally an active recruiter of converts into Islam. And he was the first sec-gen of the OIC too.
Perhaps the differtence today in Umno’s stress on religious values is its willingness to work with PAS.
Sin Chew‘s complaint is that an “Islamic country image just because of his [Najib Razak’s] own political interests … will not augur well for the country’s pursuit of economic transformation and high-income status”.
In other words, the paper is of a decided view that countries sporting the Islamic image are unable to transform their economy nor attain high-income status.
Sin Chew‘s editors are truly underrating the economic success of Qatar, UAE and Kuwait, as some examples.
What is evident however is their prejudice and the concerted efforts by Chinese to scupper noble attempts by Umno and PAS to pursue the path of Islamization hand in hand.
It is the two parties getting together that Sin Chew (and The Star) are loath to see. Despite their playacting – this refers primarily to The Star and MCA – the lack of goodwill from the ostensibly BN Chinese for Islamic aspirations is becoming more and more manifest.
Actually their ill intent has even begun to show.
Aware that Umno will jettison MCA in GE14
Sin Chew and its ilk hold a firm belief that brains, talent, know-how, private capital and forward thinking are the monopoly of the Chinese in this country.
An opinion piece by one of Sin Chew‘s top people headlined ‘A third political force in the making?’ on Dec 6 said “there is little prospect the national economy will be delivered out of the current gloom” should Umno continue on its present trajectory.
The paper condemned the “Umno mentality” as:
- racist
- religionist
- exclusionist
- protectionist
- populist
The 90 percent Chinese opposition followers want Umno to be more “liberal” like Melayu DAP and the Star‘s Malay columnists.
Sin Chew reacted with alarm at the growing anti-globalization drift whereby ”rightism is gaining momentum the world over”. (It is referring to the right-wing populism that fueled Brexit and Donald Trump’s win.)
The paper also pegged a similar “apparent right tilt” by Umno as due to the decision that “the only way out for the party is to tie up with PAS”.
Umno in doing so “has contravened the BN spirit and betrayed the BN roadmap”, Sin Chew believes.
It is also foreseen by Sin Chew that ”the Umno-PAS collaboration will deal a fatal blow on the other BN component parties during the next general elections”.
MCA’s near worthless position is recognized by all and sundry, with Sin Chewnoting, “…some delegate also urged Umno to take back the transport minister post. The fact that none of the party leaders rebuked the delegate proves that BN’s power-sharing formula is no longer adhered to…”
In short, the BN is opting for a Malay-Muslim hegemony at the cost of totally alienating the MCA and perhaps Gerakan.
