Signs of extreme stress: Soi Lek tells Tee Keat to quit but flip flops soon after

by  Wong Choon Mei

MCA president Chua Soi Lek is either feeling the heat or has caught Prime Minister Najib Razak's by now famous "I never said that" disease. At a press conference after the MCA's 58th annual meeting, Soi Lek went on record calling on his arch rival and predecessor Ong Tee Keat to resign.

"If you have any integrity and you have no faith in the party, then you should resign," bold words from Soi Lek that he would within minutes regret uttering and flip flop on.

Foolish words but Soi Lek is not shy to ask for 'more'

Indeed, he soon realized that such conduct was unbecoming of a sitting president of the MCA, and rather disloyal to the BN to actually ask one of its MPs to quit. What would BN chief, Najib, say especially when BN is desperately trying to increase and not decrease the number of lawmakers it has in Parliament?

And so, the 64-year-old scandal-tainted Soi Lek moved onto his next gaffe. "Resign and resign from the party is different," he 'clarified' to the press, insisting that he was also not asking Tee Keat to quit as MP.

What then is Tee Keat supposed to resign from?

That Soi Lek is agitated is to be expected, given that Tee Keat had taken a sledgehammer to him in the days running up to the MCA meeting. Tee Keat, the Pandan MP and ex-Transport Minister, had called Soi Lek "irrelevant", saying that it would be disaster to field a man with such a stinging sex scandal in the 13th general election.

But despite having passed on his Labis seat to son Tee Yong, Soi Lek is still hungry. Like Oliver Twist, he wants "more". He is believed to be angling for an MP's seat in Johor in addition to Tee Yong's, as he regards his son as having 'proven himself' and should be treated as candidate-material in his own right.

Waste of safe seats

However, voices of dissent within the MCA are growing. Of course, the loudest may be Tee Keat's whom MCA watchers say is "for sure" not going to be allocated Pandan. Some even believe that Umno may offer Tee Keat a state seat in the coming GE-13.

It is obvious to many in the political arena that if the vengeful Soi Lek has his way, there will be nothing for Tee Keat at all.

"He wants Tee Keat out completely and this is evident in today's comments, whatver U-turn he may try to make. The enmity between the two men is so strong no one can miss it," PKR vice president Chua Jui Meng told Malaysia Chronicle.

As Jui Meng sees it, it is not unlikely that Soi Lek will get what he wants. "He is now the MCA president and while relations are not too good between MCA and Umno, it has not reached the stage where Najib will cut Soi Lek out from the equation completely," said Jui Meng.

Speculation has swirled that Umno warlords see both Soi Lek and Gerakan president Koh Tsu Koon as being unable to win in any seat they contested, except for the very safest ones, which they felt was wasted on two such seasoned but non-performing veterans.

Pundits said "sure-win seats" were usually given to very talented newcomers with high potential and the capability to add value to BN. Hardly the description for either Soi Lek or Tsu Koon.

Tee Keat drops strongest hint yet of leaving MCA

Meanwhile, Soi Lek continued to attack Tee Keat, accusing him of being the worst president the MCA ever had.

"He had a chance to lead MCA for 17 months and that was just after March 8 general election. He never did anything on reformation or transformation - all he did was to punish people, to sack people," said Soi Lek.

According to Malaysiakini, Tee Keat's immediate response was that he had never used MCA's name when carrying out his duties since Soi Lek came to power.

"Whatever I have done I did with my position as Pandan MP. What I have done is not related to MCA. All my service centre correspondents, I have not used MCA's or BN's name," said Tee Keat.

If true, then his words are extremely ominous for the BN. If Tee Keat no longer regards himself as an MCA man, is he moving onto becoming an Independent? He has already thrown his support behind Tengku Razaleigh's Amanah, a still-ambiguous self-styled third-force platform.

It is also possible that Tee Keat may join the Pakatan Rakyat led by Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim.

Sword hangs over Soi Lek

Whatever Tee Keat's faults, he still enjoys an image of a corruption fighter because of his stubborness in insisting that the Port Klang Free Zone financial debacle was made public as much as possible.

In the elite circles in the MCA, this is may be his 'death' warrant because the investigations eventually led to the prosecution of party bigwigs Ling Liong Sik and Chan Kong Choy.

But outside of the MCA, his image is still visibly better than Soi Lek's, who is now ridiculed not just because of his sex DVD which was viewed by millions on You Tube but because he is seen as a mere pawn in Umno's hand.

Because of the sex DVD, Soi Lek can at any time be prosecuted for unnatural sex which means that whatever fierce rhetoric he may make, Umno is the one who has him on a leash. And it is a very short one.

Source : MC