MCA will be able to go head to head with DAP in the next general election as Chinese voters are returning to the party, MCA secretary-general Chong Sin Woon said.

This, he said, was evident by the four DAP seats they won at the Johor elections in March.

“MCA lost to DAP in Malacca polls but in Johor, we won four seats,” Chong told The Malaysian Insight.

While the party has made some headway with Chinese voters, it has not gained all of the community’s trust back, he added.

“We hope to be able to win more Chinese seats. If Malacca and Johor are indicators, we can see the votes slowly coming back to us.

“Be it Barisan Nasional or MCA, we are now strengthening our fundamentals to win more votes.”

In Johor, MCA won four out of the 15 seats it contested against DAP in Yong Peng, Paloh, Pekan Nanas and Bekok.

Chong, however, added that despite MCA winning more seats in Johor, it was still hard to determine voting trends.

But Barisan Nasional (BN) was surprised by the increase of youth votes in Johor, Chong said.

“Traditionally, seats with more youth, we would lose to the opposition. Surprisingly, we had good support in Johor.”

Chong said this could be due to the youth groups realising the chaos in Pakatan Harapan (PH) and instead opted to vote BN.

“Young people want political stability, economic development and jobs,” he said.

Chong also said the recent state elections – where BN was the big winner – could not be used to gauge how the next general election will turn out.

He said this was because during the state elections, Covid-19 cases were still high, and there was still some form of movement control in place.

A large number of people were also unable to return home to vote, he added.

An additional 7.8 million people will be added to the electoral roll for the coming general election. Of which, 3.8 million are 18-year-olds who account for 34% of the population, he said.

No more blind support for DAP

Chong said that looking at the current trend, Chinese voters would no longer blindly vote for DAP.

“DAP used to be an image of success while MCA was portrayed as a follower of Umno. Fortunately for us, people are seeing through this now and we have a good leader in Wee Ka Siong.”

MCA was soundly defeated at the 2018 general election, winning only one parliamentary and two state seats. In the Johor and Malacca elections, the party won two and eight state seats respectively, which is gratifying, he said.

DAP’s decision to stop funding Tunku Abdul Rahman University College (TAR UC) courted the anger of Chinese voters, especially given that this was when Lim Guan Eng was the finance minister, he said.

“PH was in power for 22 months and they used this to burden Chinese businesses. It also failed to fulfil its promise regarding the Unified Examination Certificate (UEC) and to abolish unfair policies.”

This was made worse when the government planned to introduce jawi in vernacular schools in 2019.

As a previous deputy education minister, Chong said any decision regarding Chinese education was usually made after being approved by the party so that it could be held accountable. – August 18, 2022.