Cyrix’s Codex

Ahhhh. This post is dedicated to two of my MCA-loving good friends, xhiin and TQJ. Hi xhiin!

Anyway…. A while back, after my friend xhiin got his STPM results back and was applying for a university place, our conversation inexplicably turned towards politics.

Being a DAP supporter, I was just telling him of the party’s virtues, when he started ptui ptui-ing my heros Mr LKS and Karpal Singh, and DAP in general. His rational as to why DAP is unworthy of his affections runs along the lines of: When he was applying for a uni place, MCA was the one which hosted a ‘How To Apply To Ensure You Don’t Get Nothing In M’sia’s Oh So Meritocratic Uni Entrance System’ talk. I believe after the offers were out, it also hosted a ‘Desperado Pleading By Straight A’s Students Preplexed As To Why They Didn’t Even Get A Uni Place’ forum thingy., And apparently, that convinced xhiin that MCA kicks DAP’s ass.

Hmmnn… He has a point I must say. Arranging those talks was really a great PR exercise by MCA for the voters, especially young ones such as my friend there who would be able to vote soon. Very neat trick.

But me? Lol, MCA’s gonna have to try much harder than that!

Why? I’ll tell you why. What has MCA actually accomplish by organising those talks? Advising aspiring uni students like my friend xhiin here on how to ensure that he gets a place. How? By asking students to not be too ambitious with their futures and discourage picking courses like medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, etc. Why? Because due to how the M’sian education system works, those bright, or moderately bright students probably won’t get it.

Am I the only one’s who’s confused here? MCA is a political party in power who forms the government right now. Shouldn’t it have the power to reform the edu system to make it fairer for all those students-whose-parents-aren’t-super-rich-to-send-them-overseas to get into a local uni? Instead, the best MCA seems to be able to come up with is some sort of ‘administrative’ advice to give to those students: “Make sure you write down your courses correctly, don’t forget to write your name and student number, forget med/dent/phar, make sure you post it on time, don’t worry lah, etc”. Wth???

Why is this so? It’s because MCA is a politically impotent force. That’s usually what happens to junior coalition partners, like the Nationals in Australia. M’sia has 219 federal seats, and UMNO has 109 of it. It’s actually just short of 1 more seat in capturing half + 1 of the House of Representative(HoR). Meaning: It only needs 1 more seat to be able to govern M’sia by itself, without both MCA and MIC. MCA and MIC no longer have much power to influence the policy-making of the present BN government.

Instead of thanking MCA for their obvious ‘administrative’ advice, xhiin should start understanding what political parties are actually suppose to do. While MCA were busy reminding xiin to use a black pen to fill his application forms with in those talks, DAP has always fought for a fairer uni entrance system and 1 standard pre-uni exam. If there were 109 DAP or PKR MPs in the HoR, and 110 BN ones, then we would start to see some action in rectifying these issues. BN would then be very anxious to keep their 1 seat advantage to keep itself in govt, and the voters can then demand change in those issues, or threaten to vote DAP or PKR into power in the next elections. This scenario frequently happens in Australia, incidentally.

Political parties are suppose to make policies: How schools, unis, the police, economy, etc should be run. They are also suppose to make new laws and legislations. Not going around bringing home girls who’s ran away from their families with their boyfriends. Do you see MCA/MIC/Gerakan/etc doing these policy-thingies right now? Nope.

Instead, parties outside of BN are different. They are not constraint by BN’s whip. For example, DAP or PKR if in power, can instead of just giving useless ceramahs on how not to screw up filling up your uni forms, can actually change the whole uni system to make it fairer and more transparent. See the difference? This is what real political parties are suppose to do.