From Terence Netto
Wit is so rare in the exchanges between our politicians that in the exceptional instance it occurs, the occasion must be marked in italics.
Former MCA vice-president Ti Lian Ker has been chafing at the bit over his party’s diminishment in Malaysian politics.
From a sizeable presence in government with at least four ministerial positions when Barisan Nasional held the reins of power MCA, with just two seats in Parliament, is reduced to the status of unwanted guest in the Anwar Ibrahim-led Madani administration.
With DAP, its longtime arch-rival, holding 40 parliamentary seats but unable seemingly to parlay that sizeable presence into executive clout, MCA would seem churlish to complain about their plight: that of being “in” among the governors but “out” among the influencers.
It is a denigrating situation and Ti, their most vocal complainant about the party’s anomalous position, is often seen publicly writhing in discontent.
It’s the kind of “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” tension which breaks out into cantankerous exchanges between Ti and such Umno types as Puad Zakarshi, the Umno supreme council member who’s made it his business to nail seeming untruths about his party.
Sometimes broadsides against the DAP from MCA types prompt stalwarts of the former to defend their party against these salvoes.
The most recent saw MCA publicly musing on the futility of trying to work together with the DAP if only to have something to do with being a member of the Madani administration, of which DAP is a conspicuous though not transparently powerful member.
The latter feature has already begun to earn the DAP the same criticism it hurled against the MCA when the latter was a coalition partner of Umno in the BN government of past decades.
This brickbat hurts DAP because the implication is that the party has become a political eunuch, a political operator with presence but no vocals.
Hence Ti’s reply to Loke’s dismissal of MCA as a political player that DAP has no need for drew forth the best sally in the circumstance: what need has DAP for MCA when it has already become “MCA 2.0”.
The best wit is often self-deprecatory: Ti’s wit has deprecated MCA the better to twit DAP.
More of this spiel would brighten our political discourse.
Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.
