COMMENT | Does it make a difference who stirs Chinese emotions?

"Either Umno and the police are covering up an impending terror attack, or MCA is making things up to scare non-Muslims into submission."

- Howard Lee (2017) at the height of the 'Better Beer Ban' fiasco

COMMENT | Ti Lian Ker's piece about the DAP stirring up "Chinese" sentiment, now that they are back in the opposition, got the predictable responses such pieces by the MCA generates. It would be a mistake to dismiss Ti's rhetoric because it points to underlying problems faced by the DAP during their brief stay in Putrajaya.

It also makes the point that non-Malay power structures easily fit into their roles of cannibalising each other for the political benefit of Malay power structures.

Didn't MCA do the same thing during the long Umno watch? Yes and no. Yes, they were furthering the bumiputera agenda of whichever Malay potentate was in power, but no, they were not raising the toxicity level in the political landscape.

They never attempted to promote any agenda like the "Bangsa Malaysia" Kool-Aid, nor did they attempt to redefine Islam as a "moderate" religion with the aid of Islamic political and religious operatives who would later abandon a moderate Islamic narrative when in power. They relied on Umno to do that, which was self-defeating, but if we are talking realpolitik, then it was the only option they had, and for a time they had the support of the majority in the Chinese community.

MCA's history of nation-building, the kind which involved managing expectations, compromise and yes, complicity, was a big juicy target for a mob fueled by ahistorical polemics and non-Malay (specifically the DAP) politicians who promised that the non-Malay communities would not have to beg for scraps of the table before Harapan assumed federal power...