How sad for Malaysian Indians…

Don’t we have young, energetic leaders to lead and represent the Malaysian Indian community in the government?

Why is that MIC – the party that politically represent this community – is continued to be led by the same president since 1981?

Malaysian media today reported that S Samy Vellu was returned unopposed as party president for the 10th term after nominations closed yesterday.

And The Star says this indicated that Samy Vellu is “stronger than ever, politically”.

How sad for the Malaysian Indians. While the whole country is talking about changes in political leadership to allow new, younger leaders to come in with newer, fresher ideas, MIC members seem to have turned their backs to such calls.

At this year’s presidential nomination, Samy Vellu, 70, garnered 528 nominations for the post. Seven nominations were rejected for technical reasons. And no one had the guts to challenge him.

How could they? Previous experiences have shown how difficult it has been to unseat Samy Vellu.

Many had hoped that the present deputy S Subramaniam would go for the kill this time around.

After all he had the reasons to do so – he was dropped from retaining his parliamentary seat in the last general election and more recently Samy Vellu has openly endorsed vice president G Palanivel as his next deputy, sidelining the 62-year-old Subramaniam who has been MIC deputy president since 1980.

So with his political future heading to graves, many did expect Subramaniam, 62, to stand up against Samy Vellu.

But maybe the fall out after his last attempt to unseat Samy Vellu in the late 80s still in mind, Subramaniam just wants to hold on to his deputy post. His thinking maybe is to hold on to the number two post and then assume the top spot after Samy Vellu’s retirement.

If that is the case, he is most definitely wrong. For starters, it looks very unlikely that he will retain his deputy post.

At the end of the day, what we will see is Samy Vellu leading the community again, knowing full well that his chosen deputy will not rock the boat or jump the gun.

In the meantime, the victorious Samy Vellu has been singing his same old tune – much needed to be done for the community.

This is how The Star reported him as saying after the victory:

He described his tenure as a journey to help the Indian community and
transform them into a successful race.

“So far, the community has been successful, but we still have a long way to
go.

“I have been elected as a servant to serve you. I want to finish this
journey and for me to do that, the Indian community needs a quantum leap
economically and socially. I won’t give up on this as long as I remain
president,” he said.

How really sad for the community that a new face with most probably better ideas is not given a chance to chart out the future of the community. In fact more interestingly, where are the new, young faces?

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