MIC will focus on defending the two parliamentary seats it won in the 14th general election by winning the hearts of constituents as part of its strategy to be a “jaguh kampung” (village champions).

This decision comes as the Barisan Nasional component party is forced to vacate the  Cameron Highlands seat earlier this week after it lost an election petition.

MIC president S. Vigneswaran said the party accepted that it is no longer in government and would focus on serving constituents.

“We will appeal (the court ruling), and if we fail in our appeal, we will be ready to defend the seat in a by-election,” he told The Malaysian Insight yesterday, after the election court’s decision on Friday to nullify the party’s win in the parliamentary seat due to alleged graft by its candidate C. Sivarraajh. 

“In the current political climate, we feel we have a good chance to win again in Cameron Highlands.

“MIC is not out to be a national champion, we want to be ‘jaguh kampung’ (village champions). We will defend the seats we won.”

The election court ruled that there was sufficient evidence that bribery took place as alleged by the DAP candidate, M. Manogaran, who filed the petition accusing Sivarraajh of giving bribes of between RM30 and RM1,000 to Orang Asli voters in the seat.

Sivarraajh, who is also MIC vice-president, won the seat with 10,307 votes in a five-cornered fight.

He has 14 days from Friday to file an appeal, or a by-election will be called.

Tapah is the other federal seat MIC won in GE14.

It failed to retain Segamat where its then party president, S. Subramaniam was incumbent, and Hulu Selangor. It also failed to wrest back other seats it had lost in previous elections.

Vigneswaran, who is a senator and Dewan Negara president, became MIC president a uncontested during party polls in July.

He said as an opposition party now, MIC had “lots of time” to focus on its work among the grassroots and to rebuild the party.

“Before (losing power), we were busy with government programmes. Now, we have time to spend with the grassroots for the next four to five years until the 15th general election.

He also said people could now compare the performance of MIC’s ministers previously with the four Indian ministers in the Pakatan Harapan government.

“I see our loss in the general election as a blessing in disguise. All the accusations against MIC in the past, that we did not fulfil our promises, now people can judge whether the new government MPs are doing well.

“People can compare what MIC ministers did for the 50, 60 years that we were in power, with what the four Indian ministers in the government now are doing,” he said, referring to Communications and Multimedia Minister Gobind Singh Deo, Human Resources Minister M. Kulasegaran, Water, Land and Natural Resources Minister Dr Xavier Jayakumar, and Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department P. Waytha Moorthy.

He said MIC had fought for the teaching of Tamil and Chinese languages in government schools to foster integration and had supported the Indian community’s education and welfare needs.

“The new government today has four Indian ministers but what have they done for the Indian community?

“Instead, their ministers issue statements that can threaten racial harmony,” he said, referring to the joint statement by Gobind, Kulasegaran, Xavier and Waytha Moorthy last Monday on the violence at the Sri Maha Mariamman temple in Subang Jaya.

The four ministers had questioned the police’s statement that the clashes were not a racial incident but were an internal squabble between factions in the temple.

“They issued a statement about the violence at the Sri Maha Mariamman temple, blaming the security forces and causing people to lose respect for our uniformed officers. And in the end, a fireman was attacked,” Vigneswaran said. – December 2, 2018.