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Sunday June 28, 2009

Gerakan reins in a firebrand

INSIGHT: By JOCELINE TAN


Gerakan has acted swiftly against its rampaging vice-president Huan Cheng Guan whose actions threaten to undermine the party leadership and its efforts at recovery.

UNTIL recently, not many people had heard of Huan Cheng Guan. But the Gerakan vice-president (VP) is now one of the more famous faces in politics.

Huan, a former MP from Penang, has been in the news every day but the trouble is that he is making news for all the wrong reasons.

His political career is about to crash because Gerakan has suspended him for three years for his public attacks on both the party and its leaders.

And the reason he is such a hot news item is because he needs little persuasion to open his mouth, and he has a flamboyant way with words.

For instance, he referred to his party leaders as “headless chickens” and said they ran Gerakan like a “private limited company”.

Huan: His rebelliousness is a sign of the times in Gerakan.

After threatening to quit Gerakan, he said political parties were like credit cards; if one did not like Visa, go for Mastercard. Then he changed his mind about leaving and said Gerakan was like “my second wife” and he could not simply “go and find another wife or girlfriend.”

He also declared that the party would be left without any grassroots if he left because the grassroots would follow him out.

His remarks have made fantastic news copy for the media.

But his party leaders think otherwise and are very annoyed with him. They find him embarrassing, even damaging, to the party or, as one of them put it, “he is scoring home goals” for the other side.

“He is fighting his own shadow,” said party national speaker Tan Sri Dr Chin Fook Weng.

Huan’s fight with the party started over the appointment of coordinators to serve the various constituencies in Penang. The appointments are a big thing because the coordinators are also potential candidates for the general election.

As a VP, Huan was on the exclusive central working committee (CWC) which decided on these appointments in May. But he got upset when the CWC did not appoint one of his supporters.

That sparked off his tirade against the party. He slammed party leaders, threatened to quit and hinted at joining PKR. For that, he was served a show-cause letter.

The way he responded to the show-cause action only worsened matters. Apparently, he approached party president Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon in the Parliament lobby and as he handed over his letter of explanation, he said, “big fat cheque for you.”

It was done in a flippant manner but in full view and within earshot of the press corps.

Dr Koh, the prim and proper person that he is, looked scandalised and did not appreciate the joke. It was, as the Penangites would say, “boh swee (not nice, or inappropriate behaviour) and “boh hor bin” (did not give face or was disrespectful).

Dr Koh decided to open the envelope in front of everyone. Inside was a short letter apologising to the party and president, “if I have said anything that hurt the party.”

Huan then tried to grab and kiss his president’s hand ala the Malay way, but Dr Koh was not in the mood for charades or kisses and snatched his hand away.

A few days later, the CWC rejected his explanation and slapped him with a three-year suspension, which Huan has till July 4 to appeal.

Huan’s goose is cooked if the suspension is not lifted. He will not be able to contest the next party polls due in 2011 and few expect him to be picked as a candidate in the next general election.

Gerakan will be left with only one elected VP in Datuk Mah Siew Keong. The other elected VP, Datuk Dr S. Vijayaratnam, died last year in a tragic accident. Another four VPs are appointed.

Some party leaders think it has been much ado over nothing. But it is no small matter when a VP, who ranks No. 3 in the party, publicly attacks the party and its leaders.

Dr Chin: ‘Every day he is driving one more nail into the coffin’

“I feel very bad for him. I was close to him and there were a number of times when he got into trouble and I helped him out. It is painful for me to see him doing this to himself and dragging the party down in the process,” said Dr Chin.

“Every day, he is driving one more nail into the coffin. I advised him to stop all this and behave like a principled elected VP. The ball is now in his court.”

Huan is aware that Dr Chin, one of the most senior and respected figures in Gerakan, had pushed for the three-year suspension. Although they were close, Dr Chin is a no-nonsense man and was appalled at the way Huan had carried on.

A large part of the problem has to do with Huan’s personality.

The man is not moulded in the usual cut-and-dried Gerakan prototype but has a big personality and a broad, aggressive face with two big moles on the forehead to go with it.

He is an unabashed go-getter who has no qualms about using his connections – and he does have quite impressive connections. It was these connections which got him appointed as executive secretary to the Backbenchers Club in Parliament.

He started in politics as an aide to then deputy chief minister Datuk Seri Dr Ibrahim Saad, and that was where he built up his contacts.

But his rise up the party was largely because he could do things for the top guns which others could not. He had a very direct, even crude, style but no one complained then because he delivered.

When met in Penang on the eve of the March 8 elections, he had claimed he was not bothered whether he won or lost because he had business interests in Vietnam and planned to spend his time there.

He was then unhappy about being assigned to a state seat and having to give up his former Batu Kawan parliamentary seat for Dr Koh. As things turned out, Gerakan lost everything and Huan is still hanging around in these parts.

Many in the party were stunned when he made it as one of the three VPs in the party polls last November because they said “he is not VP material”.

His actions in the last few weeks appear to have proven his sceptics right. A real VP material kind of person, they claimed, would not do what Huan has done.

“The friction in the party began before the general election and it’s still happening. Besides, Huan has big ambitions. He has gone around saying he is eyeing the president post after Tsu Koon steps down,” said political analyst Khoo Kay Peng.

Some said he expected a government post from the party after becoming VP and was disappointed when nothing came his way.

But Huan’s rebelliousness is also a sign of the times in Gerakan. Morale in the party is still low and people like Huan probably feel the game has changed and they don’t have to play by the rules.

In better times, he would not have dared to go against the leadership this way. But the party is at its weakest after being wiped out in Penang.

Although Dr Koh is in the Cabinet and despite his experience as an administrator with an ivy league PhD to boot, he lacks the X-factor needed to revive the party.

Gerakan has as good as kissed goodbye to any future claim to the chief minister’s post in Penang where Pakatan Rakyat looks set to rule for more than a term.

But the fact is that Dr Koh cannot afford to have someone so high in the party hierarchy aiming pot shots at him, undermining his standing and, worse, encouraging others to follow suit.

Hence the swift castration of Huan.

Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew met top Gerakan leaders when he was in town recently. It was not a very fruitful meeting because one insisted on telling his version of things while the other had more or less made up his mind on things.

When Lee took his leave, he wished his hosts good luck. Then, he added rather ironically, “You need more than luck.”

It was not the best of meetings or the best of partings, but even an outsider like Lee could immediately see the bleakness of the situation.

It would need no less than a miracle for the party to recover by the next general election.

But, said secretary-general Teng Chang Yeow: “In politics, you go through ups and downs. All of us have to work at it if we want to be up again.”

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