MIC president S.A. Vigneswaran described the current political drama within Barisan Nasional (BN) as a “family issue” and said that the party’s central working committee was meeting to resolve it. 

“It’s a family thing. We are just going to have a meeting and resolve things,” he briefly told reporters at the party’s headquarters in Kuala Lumpur today ahead of the emergency meeting. 

“Every time political parties would have an issue but we are resolving it in the meeting,” he added. 

However, he refused to elaborate on what the issues were.

Yesterday, MIC was absent from the Barisan Nasional event where the coalition unveiled its candidate for the upcoming general election.  

Yesterday, Vigneswaran said the party would not attend the meeting to announce BN candidates at World Trade Centre Kuala Lumpur.

In a WhatsApp message to The Malaysian Insight, he said the party’s emergency meeting would decide if MIC will accept or reject the seats it is offered, or remain uninvolved in the election. 

The MIC president said he did not want the party to be drawn further into the matter.

Asked on why he was absent at the BN event yesterday, Vigneswaran said he had a prior meeting to attend.

“Like (Ahmad) Zahid Hamidi said, I had a meeting,” he said. 

Earlier, party deputy president M. Saravanan said MIC’s no-show at last night’s event was because its prospective candidates were busy with preparations at their respective constituencies.

In the 2018 general election, the party contested in nine seats with its deputy M. Saravanan retaining the Tapah seat and then Youth chief C. Sivarraajh winning the Cameron Highlands seat.

However, the Cameron Highlands constituency was lost in 2019 after the election court annulled Sivaraajh’s win for alleged vote-buying.

In the subsequent by-election, BN fielded Ramli Md Noor, who went on to win and become the country’s first Orang Asli MP.

Umno has no intention of giving up Cameron Highlands and therefore has given the Malay-Chinese dominated Teluk Intan seat to MIC instead.

According to party insiders, the country’s oldest ethnic Indian party will be fielding candidates in Tapah, Sungai Siput, Hulu Selangor, Padang Serai, Sungai Buloh, Port Dickson, Segamat, Teluk Intan and Kapar.

Sources indicate that Vigneswaran is a safe bet for Sungai Siput, while Saravanan will defend the Tapah seat for a third time.

Currently the names being bandied about for the remaining seats are vice president T. Mohan (Hulu Selangor), former Youth chief C. Sivarraajh (Padang Serai), Selangor Youth chief Punithan (Sungai Buloh), former deputy education minister P. Kamalanathan (Port Dickson), party treasurer M. Ramasamy (Segamat), vice president T. Murugiah (Teluk Intan) and Women chief Mohana Muniandy (Kapar).

The MIC kerfuffle adds to the Barisan Nasional drama that has been unfolding since the start of the week.

Lynchpin party Umno has been grappling with fallout as several top veterans were dropped from its general election line-up. – November 2, 2022.