The MCA party elections will not now take place. The BN house rule, implied and unwritten, that challenging the president weakens the party, overrides the party's rules and regulations. For when a president of a BN party is challenged, the party is irrevocably split. One need not look far. When Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah challenged Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed in 1987, it split UMNO. When the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrhaim, failed in a putsch against the Prime Minister, he ended up in jail but only after further splitting UMNO. The MCA is replete with disasters of this kind. This happens when party presidents decide that once elected, they must be immune to challenge for as long as they decided to stay in office.

But challenges do not come overnight. It breaks into the open after behind-the-scenes persuasion and reason fail. As the tempo rises, the president turns tetchy and irritated in public. Before long, hemmed in by pressures to step down, he turns on his attackers to cause another messy public conflict that devalues the party. BN party presidents are, by their appointments, autocratic, with powers to expel any who dare challenge them. Every political party in BN is threatened by it. So, the UMNO president steps in to defuse the public squabbling, and save the face of the incumbent. As now in MCA. The MCA deputy president, Dato' Seri Lim Ah Lek, had much support that if he had challenged the president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, as he intended, he may not have won, but it would have forced Dr Ling out of office, split the party and the Chinese community would move further away from it.

Dr Mahathir stepped in, forced both to agree to an uncontested election, to postpone the problem three years down the road. This is unconstitutional. It cannot however prevent others, unaligned to either, to challenge the leaders. But the cryptic formula made, Dr Mahathir went off to Morocco, Libya and Bahrain, with the deputy UMNO president (and deputy prime minister) Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi heading a small committee to resolve the crisis. Dato' Seri Lim quickly signed the pledge. Not Dr Ling. He had doubts which he decided Dato' Seri Abdullah could not resolve, awaited Dr Mahathir's return.

This turns out fatal. It upset his closest aides and backers that they look to jump ship. Dr Ling may have been playing to the gallery but when he refused to sign the pledge of no contest, he strengthened his backbone with jelly. He could well have been right, but in a country where symbolism moves politics, it sent another message. He opposed the next Malay feudal leader, and that put his team at risk even if he could beat off the Lim challenge. So, while he scored points against Dato' Seri Lim, he was burning his bridges with the next prime minister. One makes secret overtures to Team B, another tells anyone who would listen that his political future is finished if he continues to support Dr Ling.

The Star, which reflects Dr Ling's views more than the MCA's, at least gets the drift of this breakup. A fortnight ago, it could only find space to attack Dato' Seri Lim and his Team B. Now it echoes Dr Ling's call to reconcile. It cannot last. The Team B is angry. The Chinese community is angry. It is UMNO which takes sides, and the compromise is seen as a way to keep Dr Ling in office. It worked in the past because the challengers fought in the cold. Not any more. When Dato' Seri Lim insisted that if Dr Ling led the MCA election team in the recent Ketari state assembly byelection, he would campaign only at his command was enough for Dr Mahathit to order Dr Ling away. Dato' Seri Lim was MP for Bentong and holds sway there. The DAP admits his campaign helped the Gerakan to be returned a majority ten times that it obtained in 1999.

So, the MCA's UMNO compromise forces it to tremble on a knife's edge. The crisis broke into the open when Dr Ling, without consulting either his presidential council or the central executive committee, bought the Nanyang Press group. It now turns out, he did not do it on his own volition. The Prime Minister, upset at its critical reporting, wanted to rein it in. Its main shareholder was once aligned to Dato' Seri Anwar, which, in the Prime Minister's view, was reason enough to have the newspapers removed from him. Dr Ling did the dirty deed. And put MCA's own investments in jeopardy. Its money-spinner, the Star group, pledged its shares for the bank loans it needed to buy the Nanyang goup. It then had to make a general offer, and ended with 93 per cent of the listed shares. It was given six months to sell two-thirds of that but it cannot for the shares dropped like a stone after it bought it. If MCA cannot sell the shares, it would be unlisted. The community, and Dato' Seri Lim, would have none of it. And the circulation declines. It is a financial albatross around its neck, one UMNO would not lift a finger to take it off.

So while Dr Ling has won now, he also loses. The opposition to him, especially after the UMNO compromise, is more than he bargained for. His two wings are now irrevocably crushed. The MCA faces financial ruin. The Star's partisan reporting only ensures a Saturday Night Massacre when a new president is installed. It would be worse if enough MCA members decide to challenge the non-contest rule UMNO imposed on the MCA leaders. Would it translate into action? It may or it may not. The Team B knows it is home free. All it has to do is wait. Especially, the longer Dr Ling continues in office, the quicker and harder he would fall. It is how every MCA president fell. The crisis is no different from past crises. The end is finite. The quicker if the Prime Minister decides he would not retire until he is 95 in 2020.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my