In 1946, Indian community leaders like the late KL Devasar, John Thievy realised that when India becomes a sovereign independent state in 1947, many Afro-Asian States in the British Empire would also demand for freedom. Hence, they desired the Indian Malayan community to have a voice in the country’s mainstream politics and constituted the Malayan Indian Congress (MIC).

They were visionaries who invested their talent, time and wealth to unite the community based on policy, purpose and action and to give it a distinct identity and recognition in multiracial Malaya, as the country was then known.

Normally, when a society is brought to birth, it is the leaders who transform it into an institution, and later the institution creates an aristocracy of talent which would ask, ‘What can I do for the party and the community" instead of ‘What can the party or community do for me?’ That transformation is the Everest of a well-ordered society. After 69 years, where are the leaders of caliber in MIC?

Presently, there is no member in the party with the relevant credentials to succeed the incumbent who is in office for 28 years. Hence, there is a paucity of leaders in MIC. The question, have a generation of lettered cadres who joined the party in the seventies and early eighties immatured with age and have become heavy baggage?

Should that be so, then, in the minds of right thinking men, the leader has failed the party and it is not an institution but just an assembly of individuals united more by a servile and survival attitude than by dharma, policy, mission and goals. The party is a patient in declining health.

The youths are the party’s only future. Hence, succession planning should appear not as an objective to be achieved in the distant future, but it must appear a reality at every step of policy and practice, pervading the party’s activities. Planning for leadership succession is one of the paramount responsibilities of a leader. Any leader who fails to groom his successor relishes Caesarism. His mind is pickled in egoism – an arrogance of invincibility and an illusion of infallibility.

In such a regime, the exco is a rubber-stamp to endorse the leader’s decisions. The leader assumes a self-righteous pose and operates on a policy of ‘Heads I win, tails you lose’. The wise, honest, analytical and vocal are banished and the profligate who parrot the leader’s words and praise him are rewarded. Governance is opaque. A failed leader discredits and desiccates the party, for, as the saying goes, ‘A fish rots from the head and seldom from the tail’.

The new generation of voters are knowledgeable, wide awake and alert. They hold the government at the centre and the state as the joint trustees for the welfare and progress of all Malaysians. Hence, there is no reason for any Malaysian to be marginalised based on ethnicity or culture or language.

On March 8, 2008, the voters rejected several Barisan Nasional candidates including ministers and chief ministers with bluff and buffoonery. And, that list includes the six principal office bearers of MIC, top down. That is the darkest day in the history of the party.

MIC’s disastrous performance underscores the leadership’s failure to read the frustration, pain, misery and anger through the wet eyes of the thousands of Indians who lost their hard earned money in the party’s investment arm, Maika Holdings, established in 1982 and launched with much hype and hope as a miracle to lift the Indian poor from the shackles of poverty.

Instead, it is a mirage. The soaring cumulative losses since inception shattered their dream of a better future.

The party’s failure to deliver on the several promises and the company’s inability to account for the RM100 million capital and also account for the millions of IPO shares allotted to the community by the government to improve their equity holding have seriously eroded the integrity of the MIC leadership, the custodian of the funds and the repository of the power to manage the funds. If wealth is lost, nothing is lost; if character is lost, everything is lost.

After waiting patiently for twenty five years for justice, the people have realised that the said problem, poverty, lack of access to quality and purposeful education, unemployment have become intergenerational, a bequest to the next of kin. Problems avoided turned into a crisis on Nov 25 when thousands of Indians gathered peacefully in Kuala Lumpur and called for social justice.

Whilst most Malaysians would agree that the said gathering was illegal, still any irregularity in the convention and conduct of the gathering does not by itself invalidate the substance of the critical issues raised. That had primed the imagination and awareness of the voters from all walks of life.

Without any disrespect to anyone, the party needs more than ever before moral leadership. It needs a leader of destiny whose word is his bond. A leader who is detached from merit and sin. A leader who is simple and unassuming in manners and a heart full of grace. A leader with the moral and spiritual depth to rise above hate and vengeance and credit merit.

A person who sees leadership as a demand for the acceptance of responsibility and good governance and imbues in the members that silence is neither an option nor a safe defence. A leader who does not proclaim, ‘I am your leader. Only I can represent the community’. A leader who knows how to fade away gracefully like Nelson Mandela and does not overstay the invitation like Mugabe.

The changes to the Party must be substantive and not cosmetic like changing the cover, changing the flag, changing the uniform of the members and changing the party song. Instead, cure the disease and posture the party with a new structure, new ethos, new political culture and a new constitution favouring free and fair elections.

The present quota system for the top post lends itself to abuse – money politics. An election without contest and accountability is a fiction and is a euphemism for ‘elective dictatorship’. In a democracy, a leader incapable of submitting himself to the vote of the members as mandated by the party constitution is a natural underling.

As there are several unanswered questions regarding Maika and the IPO shares, both are like the proverbial Sword of Damocles hanging over the party. Without the satisfactory resolution of the said problems and without the will and commitment of the government to resolve the social ills faced by the Indian community, the party’s reordering efforts might not produce the desired results

Finally, re-ordering the Party is no longer an option but an imperative for it function as an important arm of the Barisan Nasional to build a Malaysian Malaysia in which every citizen feels that he/she is a Malaysian first, Malaysian last and Malaysian always in consonance with the aspirations of Vision 2020.