Has MIC no more energy to assert its position in BN?

ANALYSIS Having postponed its party elections in order to accommodate the hotly-contested 13th general election last May, MIC now stands at the crossroads, appearing to have run out of ammunition to assert its strength within the BN coalition - as evidenced at its annual general meeting in Malacca yesterday.

The party delegates did not miss the chance to openly express their worries about the "cold shoulder" Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak gave them when launching their AGM.

Contrary to the handouts and programmes Najib constantly dolled out to Indians before GE13, the prime minister this time around did not have any cheerful announcements to make at the MIC event, despite explicit requests from party president G Palanivel in his speech just before Najib's address.

In fact, Najib took time taking sly shots at MIC leaders, at varying degrees, in his speech. First, he said that MIC could not claim to be the best party representing Indians in this country unless it earned the overwhelming trust of the community at the grassroots level.

He called for the party to have more professionals as its grassroots leaders, and even called for a show of results and implementation before he would consider increasing allocations, as requested by the party.

'Account for all the money allocated'

The prime minister is now asking MIC to account for all the money that Najib purportedly has allocated to Indians via the party's coffers.

Whether Palanivel and his team of leaders will actually take the pains to show these results to the PM and convince him that their programmes delivered the right results is beyond anyone's knowledge.

But one thing was certain: the party leaders did not take pains to explain to their own delegates as to how they spent these allocations specifically, instead of just dolling out numbers, time and again, and claiming that their programmes benefited "many" Indians.

The delegates in their brief, often interrupted speeches, displayed the kind of rupture in the party structure.

Many asked where the money had gone to, many expressed disappointment with the PM, even more said that the party needed to be more assertive on Indian issues, and quite a few spent their time talking about money politics that affected the elections.

Palanivel claimed pride yesterday in conducting what he claimed to a clean and transparent party election, and he used the fact that 40 percent of the central working committee and vice-presidents posts experienced changes in this party elections to drive home this point.

While change is welcome in a party that increasingly looks like a junior party and is largely silent on issues pertaining to the very community it claims to represent, any real change in direction will not take place unless there is an overhaul in the top leadership of the MIC.

The 40 percent changes is irrelevant, unless the president and deputy president's posts are contested.

Allegations of money politics will always to surface, but watching delegates feeding RM50 notes to one another, while claiming that a candidate had channelled this money to the recipient, smacks of a party that has not even matured beyond the ad-hoc value of delegates' votes.

Campaigning with eight pretty models displaying their sarees, textile giant R Raghu Moorthy stormed to first place in the CWC elections.

Attracted by quirky campaigning methods

And the MIC delegates seemed to know more about a candidate through their quirky campaigning methods instead of knowing about them through word of mouth, or having any real knowledge about the candidate's grassroots connections and leadership potential.

While leadership change makes it seem like a fruitful election, the almost comical way with which the election was conducted, with bad handling of the media, and even their own delegates, says a lot about the unity in the party, post the general election.

Media personnel were initially only provided two measly tables to work on, before the room was expanded, and were not even provided with a monitor to watch the speeches and the voting process from their work stations, leaving them to fight out with delegates to get a decent peek at the stage.

Delegates who did not know where and how to vote simply flooded the hotel lobby, hardly leaving any space for the other hotel visitors to get to the concierge.

And when there was no handout from Prime Minister Najib to cheer on, all that was left for the delegates was to have a go at their own newly-elected leaders on the party's past and future directions.

When there is no money, the crack in MIC is so painfully obvious to the anybody who chances by the AGM venue. When the party can't represent its own interests within the BN coalition, how can it claim to represent the Indians out there who need real, genuine help?