The open and intense power struggle between Team A and Team B has by now lasted for about 10 months. It is true that fist-fights and bomb hoaxes are quite unprecedented in the 53-year history of the second largest component party, but power struggles are not novel or abnormal in the party. On the contrary, it has been quite incessant since its inception in 1949.
For example, in 1959, the second president of MCA, Dr Lim Choong Eu and his supporters were defeated in a party caucus by a narrow margin of votes, 89 to 80, over the issue of whether to be firm and resolute in demanding for the allocation of more parliamentary seats from the Umno-dominated Alliance (forerunner of the Barisan Nasional).
The pro-Umno elements in MCA prevailed, and Lim and his supporters quit the party.
According to a historian of Chinese politics in Malaysia, Heng Pek Koon, that upheaval left MCA "badly decimated". (Heng Pek Koon, Chinese Politics in Malaysia - A History of the Malaysian Chinese Association , Singapore, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 258)
The issue at hand was quite clear-cut. The youthful Lim who came to power only a year earlier, demanded from Umno that MCA be allocated 40 out of the 104 parliamentary seats to be contested by the Alliance — made up of Umno, MCA and MIC.
The number of seats demanded by Lim and his supporters in MCA were slightly more than one-third of the total number of parliamentary seats in the Federation of Malaya then to be contested by the Alliance.
For the self-confident and idealistic Lim, it was only right for MCA to have enough parliamentary seats to balance against Umno so that the Malay party would not be able to amend the Federal Constitution to the detriment of the Chinese and other non-Malays, at will.
More seats also meant a stronger MCA and more power for himself as the president of the party.
Curt response
However, Umno resisted with intransigence and even arrogance. Historian Heng called the attitude and response of Umno "curt". (p 257)
" [Then prime minister and Umno president] Tunku Abdul Rahman's response was predictably curt: he simply announced that the Alliance was prepared to contest the election without MCA unless the MCA president withdrew his demands.
"Additionally, he stipulated that the MCA would be allowed to remain as a member of the Alliance only on the condition that it accepted his term: an allocation of 31 seats for the MCA and the nomination of MCA candidates by himself."
The intra-party opponents of Lim in MCA viewed this as an opportunity. They exploited the displeasure of Umno by voting against the demands made by their own president, and for Umno's counter-demand.
Among the older generation of MCA veterans, Tan Siew Sin, Ong Yoke Lin and TH Tan, among others, are still remembered as "traitors" and "Umno's men in MCA". Tan Siew Sin was later appointed by the Umno-dominated government as the finance minister.
In any case, Lim and his supporters who quit MCA first formed a new party but later crossed over to Gerakan.
In the 1969 general elections, Gerakan captured the state government of Penang and Lim became the chief minister until he was personally defeated in the 1990 general elections by Lim Kit Siang, the then secretary-general of DAP and opposition leader.
Kit Siang is currently DAP's national chairperson
The presidential vacancy in MCA left by Lim in 1959 was temporarily filled by a Dr Cheah Toon Lok but in 1961, Tan Siew Sin was elected.
Under Tan's presidency which lasted until 1974, MCA continued to lose Chinese grounds to various Chinese-based opposition parties like the Labour Party, DAP, Gerakan and PPP (People's Progressive Party).
It was hardly surprising because while Tan was an English-educated technocrat, Chinese political sentiment at that time was defined by concerns of the Chinese-educated and Chinese-speaking working classes for the preservation of their system of education, culture, language and other elements of identity.
In the 1969 general elections, MCA was widely beaten all over the country by DAP, Gerakan and PPP. Chinese in Ipoh, Perak and surrounding areas even voted for Indian opposition candidates fielded by PPP instead of MCA's Chinese candidates.
Reform calls
Shocked and disappointed by the results of the 1969 general elections, some Young Turks in MCA like Dr Ling Liong Sik, Dr Neo Yee Pan and Dr Lim Keng Yaik demanded for 'reforms' within the party.
They wanted the party to be less elitist and more concerned and involved with the lower middle and working classes in the Chinese community.
Keng Yaik, for example, set up his power base in the new villages in Perak. A fluent Cantonese and Hakka public speaker, the English-educated leader was seen in some sections of lower middle and working classes as "really different" from elites like Tan Siew Sin who did not seem to be concerned with their problems.
Keng Yaik was first made a senator and also the minister with special functions for new villages by Tan in an attempt to co-opt and pacify him.
However, Keng Yaik continued to be vocal and obtained increasing support. Threatened by his 'radicalism', Tan and the conservatives in MCA urged Umno's top leadership to condemn the 'reform' movement as "communist", "Chinese chauvinists" and "a threat to security".
Keng Yaik was first removed from the cabinet and then sacked as a MCA member.
He then crossed over to Gerakan, joining Dr Lim Choong Eu. Together, the two Lims turned the originally multi-ethnic Gerakan into a Chinese competitor of MCA. Keng Yaik is now the president of Gerakan.
Meanwhile, Tan did not last long. In 1974, he underwent a major surgery and later resigned to give way to Lee San Choon, a Chinese-educated and Chinese-speaking former school teacher.
Like Keng Yaik, Lee was also a Young Turk but he was smart enough not to be openly aggressive toward the top leadership.
Lee continued to be the president of MCA until after the 1982 general elections when he suddenly and 'mysteriously' resigned from all his posts in the party and the government, even though MCA, for the first time in its existence, scored victories against DAP all over the country. Lee himself defeated the then DAP chairperson, Dr Chen Man Hin in Seremban.
Umno's role
It is still believed that Umno was secretly fearful of Lee whose organising ability, public speaking skills and ideology of Chinese 'self-help' through the establishment of political businesses and institutions of higher education could threaten Umno's dominance of the coalition, government and country in the name of 'Malay dominance'.
In fact, in 1978, Lee's presidency was openly challenged by Michael Chen, a top MCA leader who was (and still is) closer to Umno than his own party.
Chen was, however, soundly defeated by Lee. He and his supporters then crossed over to Gerakan but returned to MCA latter. Chen is now the appointed president of the unelected Dewan Negara, or Senate.
The incessant power struggles in MCA between 1959 and 1979 had already established certain patterns of political behaviour among the actors which persist even until today.
For example, while Umno needs a strong MCA as an ally to provide it and the ruling coalition with Chinese votes, it also fears MCA becoming a 'Chinese chauvinist power' and making 'excessive demands' within the coalition and government.
Umno therefore always needs to support dissidents and challengers in MCA to keep the dominant faction in balance.
Sensing the open hope and secret fear of Umno, ambitious dissidents and challengers in MCA also find it useful to court the support of Umno in their challenges to the dominant factions.
After 1974, Gerakan also began to provide Umno with another group of Chinese in the government to check and balance against MCA.
To Umno, the function and role of MCA dissidents and Gerakan are the same in essence, albeit not in name.
Tomorrow: Part 2
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.