“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.”
– Karl Popper

COMMENT | Should MCA leave BN? The short answer would be yes.

Remember in the Balakong by-election, DAP national chairperson Tan Kok Wai challenged MCA to leave BN if it lost the seat. Not only that, he also said that MCA should join Pakatan Harapan in the future, if they agree with the coalition's principles.

I have no idea what Harapan’s principles are, but if Tan’s muddled thinking about race-based parties is anything to go by, these principles must be really screwed up.

This is what Tan said about race-based politics: “Malaysia is a multiracial country. If race-based parties continue to exist, they could affect the harmony and unity among the people, as they are only looking out for themselves,”

How anyone can say this with Bersatu as the anchor for Harapan, when political operatives claimed that Mahathir and Bersatu were needed to secure the Malay vote, and a bumiputera congress was held to assuage the anxiety of Harapan-supporting Malays is beyond me. But then again, this idea of multiculturalism was always a non-Malay meme. Mainstream Malay politics is not about inclusivity.

So is this idea of leaving BN something MCA should consider? After May 9, MCA operatives have been more amenable to having conversations with me. Before, there was understandably a reticence in our conversations; these days, MCA operatives are more open to a kind of no-holds-barred discussion about the state of the federation.

When I look over some of the social media data, graphs and what-have-yous that MCA operatives have me study, along with other open source material, I always tell MCA that they are misreading the “running dog” narrative that fuels mainstream non-Malay politics.

Look, the Chinese community, no matter what the Kool-Aid says, did not abandon MCA because they were a race-based party, but because they believed that MCA were subservient when it came to the racial and religious based provocations of the Umno state...