IT’S going to be a long, hard road ahead for MCA and MIC – both founding members of Barisan Nasional (BN) – to move forward following their poor showings in the general election, and their subsequent absence from the cabinet, analysts said.

They told The Malaysian Insight that these two parties had lost their political strength, and could have been left out of Anwar Ibrahim’s cabinet due to problems within BN. 

They also said that these two parties were not in any position to make demands, but did not rule out the possibility of deputy minister posts being offered to them.

“The exclusion in cabinet can be read as a form of punishment because MCA and MIC had demanded Ahmad Zahid Hamidi relinquish his post as BN chairman,” said Dr Mazlan Ali of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. 

“MCA and MIC also did not contribute much with the defeat in almost all of the seats contested. The appointment of BN MPs into Anwar’s cabinet was recommended by Zahid to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. 

“MCA and MIC cannot be making demands or noise due to their own performance. Even DAP, which won a lot of seats, was only given four ministerial posts,” said Mazlan. 

A few days after the general election, MCA secretary-general Chong Sin Woon said his party had lost confidence in Zahid and urged him to give way to someone new to lead the coalition. 

Former MIC vice-president C. Sivarraajh urged Zahid to “take a rest and let others lead”. 

This was after BN had won only 30 of the 221 parliamentary seats it contested. 

In the general election, MCA retained Ayer Hitam and Tanjung Piai while MIC won in Tapah through its deputy president M. Saravanan. 

Deputy ministers possible 

Ilham Centre’s Hisommudin Bakar said things would remain the same for Anwar’s administration with or without MCA and MIC. 

Hisommudin stressed that what was more important was how the newly formed cabinet solved the people’s plight. 

“With or without MCA and MIC, there is no major influence over Anwar’s cabinet because MCA and MIC have both lost the support of the Chinese and Indian community. 

“What is important is how the cabinet is able to work for the whole country, especially the needy regardless of colour,” said Hisommudin. 

Dr Oh Ei Sun from the Singapore Institute of International Affairs said although it appeared that MCA and MIC were not recommended by BN to be part of the cabinet, it remained to be seen if party leaders would be made deputy ministers. 

“In this volatile political landscape, anything is possible, and they should not be totally discounted,” argued Oh. 

Anwar has yet to announce his deputy ministers. 

Last week, Pakatan Harapan (PH) secretary-general Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said that Anwar’s government may consider giving Sivarraajh a suitable role in the administration. 

This came after the MIC man agreed to withdraw from contesting in Padang Serai this Wednesday to let the PH candidate have a better chance of winning. 

“Sivarraajh’s withdrawal was made unconditionally, but I’m convinced as a young leader, Sivarraajh deserves a spot,” said Saifuddin. 

Assuaging Malay displeasure 

Recently, there has been public outcry over a lack of non-Malay representatives in Anwar’s 28-member cabinet. 

The Indian community said there were four Indian ministers in PH’s 2018 administration. In the current cabinet, there is only one.  

The analysts, however, agreed that Anwar’s unity government had good racial representation.

“The way I see it, Anwar’s cabinet has a good mix of several races. The deputy prime minister is from Sarawak and we need to remember, the cabinet is not as huge as it was before,” said Mazlan. 

Oh said that while it was important to have a good mix of races in the cabinet, the political reality remained that most Malays were not comfortable with a racially balanced one.  

“Hence Anwar also has to tamper his cabinet to assuage the existing majority Malay displeasure, so that he could still retain at least a semblance of Malay support,” Oh stressed. – December 6, 2022.