They put up a slogan “MCA can deliver” at their recent convention (see picture below).
What do you think the party has delivered to BN the past 5 years?
Think about it
Has MCA, which owns the Star Media Group, delivered 5.63 million pairs of eyeballs and ears to the BN?
If that many Malaysians – 5.63 million adults – are exposed daily to the BN’s message, why is it that the MCA is unable to get even a fraction of them to listen sympathetically?
Remember all the photographs we’ve seen of the MCA Mega Dinners? Everyone was busy eating. Hardly anybody paid attention to the speeches by the MCA leaders.
Worse, the diners walked out when the party president started speaking. The guests attended for the free/cheap food and to collect the cheques (photos bottom of page).
“MCA can deliver”. Other MCA banners read that the party “stands with PM Najib”.
Standing with the PM but kicking his wife
Yet MCA is perfectly fine with its newspaper’s decision to promote The Star reporter who tweeted “Oi Big Mama”. The reporter who was the Star-NUJ chairman was given a promotion shortly after the said Twitter exchanges (screenshot below).
He had tweeted “All the ladies in sarees are melting under the sun” waiting for Rosmah’s late arrival (photo of the PM’s wife at the function, below).
Teh Eng Hock had tweeted when he was on assignment, i.e. during working hours and on company time. Therefore it is quite reasonable to infer that he is representing the views of his employer The Star.
His Twitter exchange was with Hannah Yeoh who has 55,000 Twitter followers. So the “Oi Big Mama” jibe was read by many twits in the social media network including those The Star editors who are Hannah Yeoh’s Twitter followers.
Christians are persecuted, PM doesn’t care
The Star runs online programmes that promote Twitter ‘personalities’.
Like this particular individual called ‘Cina’ at the Twitter account @YouTiup.
A fortnight ago he tweeted:
“it doesn’t matter if your PM is friendly to Christians or not, you’re still gonna congregate in the upstairs of shophouses, like thieves.”
Cina@YouTiup has often been retweeted by the Star Editor. Of course we can still recall that the Star Editor had also tweeted that MCA had “too many old dinosaurs“.
Cina @YouTiup is publicized and promoted by The Star.
Below is a screenshot of the tweet by the Star Editor encouraging Twitterjaya inhabitants to read the paper’s online coverage of its cyber session “with the Cina himself”.
Cina@YouTiup is ‘followed’ by the Star Editor (screenshot below). As has been highlighted several times previously in this blog, the MCA paper’s interaction in the social media is overwhelmingly with opposition politicians as well as the pro-opposition cliques such as Suaram, Tenaganita, etc.
Given this tendency at The Star, it is indeed difficult to imagine how the paper can acquire any meaningful perspective from the BN point of view.
A parallel example on the lack of exposure and understanding of ‘the other side’ can be drawn from the failure of The Star to realise that Pork Ribs are not a Ramadan Delight. The paper suffers from the same lack of exposure to the POV of the other side of the political divide too (i.e. lacking in understanding of the BN relationship).
Million ringgit question
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The Star was conspicuously silent to Lim Guan Eng’s Allah challenge and when it finally published a report on the fifth day (after the Penang Chief Minister’s Christmas eve message), it was instead to “snipe” at the poor MCA spokesman who criticized Guan Eng.
Don’t you think that if the Star media group was really BN-friendly, then the 5.63 million combined total readers and radio listeners (plus Star Internet TV viewers) might be just a little bit more sympathetic to the MCA?
Yet the MCA is so unpopular with the public. This being the case, it’d would be quite impossible for the party to “deliver” (c.f. the big banner promising “MCA can deliver”) the Chinese votes.
This begs the question of what is going on in the MCA, so much so that its media is freely allowed to continue popularizing the DAP 2.0 politicians.
What the MCA folks are saying
The Malaysian Insider on 25 Aug 2011 carried the following headline –‘MCA founder’s granddaughter lauds Guan Eng’s policies in Penang‘.
Tan Siok Choo is the daughter of Tun Tan Siew Sin who is the son of MCA founder Tun Tan Cheng Lock. TMI reported that she heaped praises on the DAP sec-gen in a radio interview.
Golly, even members of the MCA first family are lauding Guan Eng, what more The Star readers.
Tan Siok Choo went to school in Convent Bukit Nanas and her mother’s a Christian, by the way.
You wanna know what the MCA people are really thinking? Below is a screenshot of a tweet by the ex-MCA Subang Jaya state assemblyman.
Staunch Christian Datuk Lee Hwa Beng, a three-term Adun, tweeted: “… cannot deny majority of Chinese not with MCA under current leadership”.
Poor MCA. Money can’t buy it love. It can only buy the services of a blogger who will defend The Star as being solidly pro-establishment.
Helen Ang 
MCA can send their dinosaurs as exhibit at the Museum of Malaysian Politics.
I guess there was a typo for the slogan, it should read
MCA CANNOT DELIVER
MCA can deliver… what ah… I think deliver #Pakatoons propaganda through Gunting. kihkihkih.
They can deliver pizza for DAP
Stop the Lies ! Read Financial Times London. Gillian Tett. ‘Chinese lessons for America’. She proposes the melding of the Chinese meritocratic and the American system of governance.’
The BN as led by the UMNO has been practising precisely since 1957 what she proposes today for China and the US.
We do not need the PR which apes Lee Kuan Yew’s failed policies and failed Singapore.
What we need is for the DAP, PAS and PKR to join the BN as led by the UMNO to create a spirit of compassion, tolerance and accommodation which will resonate across the whole wide World even to the benefit of the embattled Palestinians, Syrians and the Israelis.
The BUMIPUTRAS and all Malaysians will then stand proud, tall and strong in history.
There is nothing Lee Kuan Yew and the DAP can teach us. What is more important is what our beloved parents taught us. No more ! No less !
The MCA President should invite Khairil Khir Johari to be his Special Advisor (General duties). He is an honourable and highly principled gentleman. A rose amongst the thorns. The President should also invite Tunku Abdul Aziz as an Advisor with special duties. By these acts, MCA would have thrown open their books for all to see its potential for the next 50 years.
Dear Helen,
Just curious, if you’re so keen on “defending Islam from Christianity” – as a shorthand way of describing your activism these days – why don’t you convert to Islam?
Dear Anon,
It is your DAP friends who should convert to Islam (as advised by the Mufti of Perak) since they are so keen on using the Allah word.
Come to think of it, you’d look pretty in a tudung (not that I’m a Muslim).
I’m not a politician like Hannah, Elizabeth or Nie Ching. There’s no need for me to chameleon.
Dear Helen,
Re #8, the use of “Allah” pre-dates Islam. It’s used by Arab Christians.
Aiyoh. So many of the Muslim readers here have already explained the epistemology.
But the question remains, Helen, why are you so keen on “defending Islam from Christianity”? Is Christianity a threat to your Buddhist faith? Are you saying Malaysian Buddhists no longer need fear Islamisation?
This is a far cry from your Malaysiakini days where I have always been encouraged by your defence of non-Muslim rights from the State.
You seem to forget that in Kedah, Penang, (Perak briefly), Selangor and Kelantan, Pakatan ARE the state.
The 7-year-old girl Tan Yimin was kidnapped by the Islamic Dept enforcers in Penang and taken cross-border to S’gor — both Pakatan states which closed one eye to the illegal and forced conversion to Islam of a Chinese Buddhist minor against her father’s wishes and without his consent.
In Selangor, the Selayang municipal council destroyed the Hindu shrine in the compound of an Indian family home.
In Selangor, the celebration of Christmas has been elevated to a state-level event under the patronage of the MB. Christians are powerful in S’gor.
Perak should by rights have gotten its first evangelical MB. The state constitution provides the Sultan the authority to use his discretion to appoint a non-Malay, non-Muslim. So actually the Perak state law permits it but the political reality of our race relations did not allow such (realpolitik) instability.
As for the current ‘Allah’ dispute, do you condone their behaviour? Take my recent posting on their claim of the “400 year old BM bible”. It was a bahasa Indonesia translation of only Matthew (one book out of 73 in the Catholic bible) but they slyly misrepresent and they twist and they turn.
I can see why so many Malays are crying foul and calling them biadab. The question is not my ‘defending’ Islam against Christianity but why other Chinese are not willing to speak up and say, “Come on lah, play fair”.
Indeed, the use of “Allah” pre-dates Islam.
u will also get this answer from Uztaz Fathul Bari in this context… pse search in youtube for his clarification on kalimah Allah…
Dear Helen,
On the Malay Bible, Christians have not misrepresented the use of Allah at all. Matthew is an integral part of the Bible. It is a book belonging to a collection of books considered as one book. It’s not as if Matthew is a separate book that stands alone from the Bible and enjoy the recognition of a small minority of Christians. So, there’s no turning and twisting.
I can understand the offence that some Christians cause by their religious expressions. Many churches in Subang (to use your example) are characterised by triumphant spirituality. Precisely the same type of triumphalism one finds in mainstream Islam where the dialogue with other religions is considered degrading as it implies “equality” and hence “pluralism.”
Matthew is one book out of 73 books of the Catholic bible.