What has MCA done to the Chinese community in Malaysia?

We guess, many of you would be wondering why are we asking such question, “What has MCA done to the Chinese community in Malaysia?” Obviously, none of us would ever realize the real and terrible impact that MCA has made onto the Malaysian Chinese and if they were to see this, the definite question too would be, “done what?”, “don’t know”, “not aware”, “none of our business”, or even, “we don't want to know at all”.

The inception of MCA in 1949 can be traced back from the origins of the Chinese Kuomintang (KMT) and its chapter in the then Malaya, which was famously known as Kuomintang Malaya (KMT Malaya).

In aftermath of the Second World War and the defeat of the KMT forces in China in 1949, the KMT Malaya has began to move towards transforming its Malayan chapter into a local Chinese based organization in order to preserve its existence and long term political opportunity in this county.

And this is how MCA was born in February 1949, where the party later teamed up with Umno (Malay based political party) and MIC (Indian based party) to “persuade” the then British colonial government to grant independence to Malaya and later Malaysia was formed after the eastern states of the North Borneo Island were incorporated.

MCA and its effects in the Chinese community

For decades, MCA has claimed that they had done a lot in terms of politics, education, charity, welfare, culture, customary and rights for the Chinese community here. Yes, we admit that there are some goods they had done, but the problem here are, the majority of their efforts do not really benefit the community which they claimed to be representing.

Let us take up those easy ones first. For charity, welfare, culture and customary, MCA has some sort of letting the community to preserve whatever traditional in them, whatever dialects within the community which are still existing today. However, of a decade ago, MCA has began to promote the Mandarin as an official Chinese language for the community in order to get rid of the numerous dialects in many cities, towns and states here in Malaysia. And they have been quite successful in doing that.

Charity and welfare? Foundations and some welfare organizations to support and assist the community in whatever means. Of course, they have all been supported by a large numbers of Chinese businessmen who are also MCA members, who wanted something in return (titles, business opportunities, positions or whatever you could name it) in the end of the day.

On the educational matters, we all must admit that MCA has done a tremendous job by getting a college build and soon have it upgraded into a university college status after a few decades, and now a full-fledged university. However, what we do not understand is, what took the party too long to seek official recognition from the government for all its college and university’s certificates, diplomas and degrees in order to enable these scholars to gain easy entry into our nation’s civil service, to obtain public scholarships or to even to seek for any other government related grants. What really take them too long to fight for the recognition of these educational qualifications of their own initiatives?

Apart from this, MCA has also been working to its best to ensure that the Chinese educational system stays under its separate entity, by having Chinese schools for the community, having its own examination and rating system as well as its own qualification methods, like the UEC program. Again here, we would like to know and wondering why MCA was unable to fight for the recognition of the Chinese-based UEC qualification in order for students to gain entry into public universities and employment in the civil service? Why only recently has the government reluctantly awarded a limited recognition to the UEC for the use of gaining entry into the government related entities? Why hasn’t MCA able to fight for a full recognition instead?

Education again, what has MCA instilled into the minds of the youths in the community all this while? A very simple but long term effect syllabus which ensure our Chinese youths of today would look at only education as a source for better income and jobs, seeking the best in their examinations by merely memorizing the knowledge in order to pass out and to obtain good grades so that they could gain further entries into colleges and universities. It didn’t instill the creativity in the mind of these students in order to them to seek more answers from within the answers, to question the system’s effectiveness, civic conscious, but only stress on the importance of obedience and lastly to stay away from “trouble”.

So, what we got today from the community? The community of today are doing whatever they could to gain something only for themselves, becoming more materialistic instead of civic minded, becoming a typical kind of “kia su” or “kia sai”, avoid wanting to know more on what is happening in our nation, the situation around us (we not referring to that kind of busybody type) and then, lack of spirit of volunteering amongst the community at large, that means, if these works or activities does not bring any monetary returns or some sort of profit, they would not do it nor even look nor bothering about it.

What has the community turned into? Very often, members of the other community would rate the Chinese community of being selfish, materialistic, arrogant, non-social type, could not get along with members of the other communities, afraid of seeking the truths, facts or even taking the trouble to at least help out or assist those who are in need.

The other negative characteristic born out as the result of MCA’s doing today is most of those, especially the leaders of the community wanted some sort of “face”, fame and no compromise. As such, whenever you go or seeing any Chinese based associations or guilds, there are sure to be frictions or factionalism amongst them. To them, they are no fighting for the particular association, but merely using the association and the positions that he or she is holding for their own personal gain or for the benefits of their own factions. The category of selfishness can also be applied into this segment.

Then lastly, in the field of politics. Chinese political leaders normally like to play a divide and rule tactic in whatever groups, associations or political parties that they are leading. But some would say, factionalism normally exist because or leaders are looking into self-interests instead for the entire group or establishment. Yes, it is also correct, but the problem here is most top Chinese leaders who are the ones who wanted such situation to be maintained.

The political impact is, as years goes by, these Chinese political leaders are getting more and more self-centered, selfish and only looking into the interests of the smaller circle instead of the entire community at large.

Well, what has the MCA of today being turned into? A political party which is subservient only to the dominant party of the coalition call Barisan Nasional (BN), that is Umno – a very racially extreme type of Malay based political party.

It cannot be denied that MCA has disbursed a very large sum of money for the Chinese community, to support them in their activities, to give this scholarships, grants, interest-free loans or even mega dinners to the Chinese community at large.

But has all these large sum of give outs help the Chinese community in terms of safeguarding their political power, human and constitutional rights? In which part of these segments has MCA strongly come out to defend? None at all. What is the use if a Chinese businessman is so wealthy but he does not have any rights nor say at all in the affairs of our nation? What is the use if the community received whatever level of education that he or she could get but in the end, they couldn’t even express their opinions, thoughts or any other kinds of expression for the sake of the community? Most important one, most these educated people in the community of today did not even realize their fundamental rights which are enshrined in our nation’s federal constitution.

This is also as the result of the Chinese educational system instilled by MCA, which are lacking in terms of having getting to know about what is it about the responsibilities of being a Malaysian citizen. Asides, in the current ethnic educational system, there are also no mention on the importance of getting into the political mainstream, what are exactly their roles behind it.

This resulted to nearly more than 95 percent in the Chinese community today didn’t even bother to know things that are happening in our nation’s political arena and state of affairs. All they know is how to make money, then making more money and to eat whatever they could in the long term, not taking time and trouble to think nor analyzing what is going on in our nation, why did this country need us and many more.

As the result of MCA, the Chinese community of today only knows how to wake up, make money and eat as much as they could and forget about the rest. In politics, Chinese political leaders would always put factionalism and self-interests about the public interests, with no civic consciousness at all.

Something which is very similar to what KMT has done to China during their early years of rule in the Chinese mainland.