The Chinese political sentiment in the Klang Valley is still a work in progress.

EVERYONE knew everyone at the MCA lunch meeting at a Chinese restaurant in Cheras. While there was a certain camaraderie, at the same time there was a resigned air among those gathered.

It took Datuk Lau Kok Chuan, the Cheras MCA committee member, to put into words the frustration in everyone’s heart when he said MCA had never won in Cheras, and that it was a waste of time and money contesting the seat. The party, he said, should forget about putting up a candidate in Cheras in the next election. His remarks caused a stir in the room.

Cheras MCA chairman Tan Sri Tee Hock Seng finally said: “Cheras has a lot of problems. (But) we cannot think like that because our role is to serve the people.”

Politics in the valley: Younger Chinese look around and see their counterparts elsewhere asserting themselves politically, and they feel the power of their vote. – Filepic

The painful truth is that Barisan Nasional has never been able to capture Cheras from the day Sungai Besi was carved into Cheras and Bandar Tun Razak in 1995.

DAP’s Tan Kok Wai, then a second term MP for Sungai Besi, went on to take Cheras. The DAP strongman has since become synonymous with Cheras, winning with a majority of 28,300 votes, his biggest ever, in 2008.

An even more painful truth is that the sentiment in Cheras is quite reflective of that of the Chinese in the Klang Valley, the metropolitan area encompassing Petaling Jaya and the city of Kuala Lumpur (KL). The Klang Valley Chinese mood has not changed very much since 2008 and the oft used term among analysts is that it has hardened.

The Chinese make up 43% of the population in KL and 31% in Selangor. But their impact especially in the last few years has been in the way they moved as a collective force.

The 2008 political tsunami toppled state governments but it was in the Chinese-majority seats of KL and Selangor where the vote swing was most stunning and where voters turned against the Barisan by the tens of thousands.

Sim: ‘Big gap in thinking about politics’

For instance, Barisan won PJ Utara in 2004 with a 13,000-vote majority but it fell to DAP with a majority of some 20,000 votes in 2008. It adds up to a swing of some 33,000 votes.

There are some 17 parliamentary seats in the Klang Valley with this sort of mind-boggling swing of votes. For instance, the vote swing in Serdang was 32,000, PJ Selatan 27,000, Selayang 27,000, Kelana Jaya 26,000, Puchong 24,000 and Kepong 23,000.

In KL, 10 of the 11 parliamentary constituencies fell to Pakatan Rakyat. Only Federal Territories Minister Datuk Seri Zulhasnan Rafique survived but his political career was as good as finished and he was seen as the Koh Tsu Koon of the Federal Territories.

Lots of reasons have been offered for the Chinese shift – the ex-Premier’s poor performance, Umno’s race rhetoric and the keris.

But, said a former MCA strategist, Klang Valley, especially the KL area, has always harboured an anti-establishment mood particularly among the Chinese-educated and working class.

The pressure of life in a highly-urbanised environment is acute and the shortcomings of bureaucracy and government policy are more keenly felt.

Barisan’s “Chinese insurance” had comprised the middle and upper middle class in Selangor for whom life had been reasonably good. They are professionals or in business and many of them were the so-called English-speaking Chinese, a group also known as “bananas” (yellow outside, white inside).

They are a sophisticated group who keep up with current affairs and have opinions. Moreover, eight out of 10 Chinese who are eligible to vote are registered voters. They are a force to be reckoned with.

“They are part of the larger Chinese intelligentsia and, especially in Selangor, they were quite willing to give the Barisan a chance during elections. They had supported Barisan in seats like PJ Selatan, Serdang, Puchong and Kelana Jaya,” said the above strategist.

Everything, said the strategist, changed with the advent of the Internet. The new rush of information, whether accurate or otherwise, changed the way they looked at politics and government.

But the Umno incidents were the tipping point particularly for the group who used to support the Barisan. This group was a major force behind the super-swing to the opposition in the Chinese seats.

A large part of it had to do with their disappointment in Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s administration. They had ushered him in with a massive mandate in 2004 and they felt betrayed that he did not rein in the race rhetoric of his party.

Actually, it is Umno politicians who have made the Chinese angry. They retaliated through the ballot box in 2008 and MCA and Gerakan bore the brunt of it.

“You could call it the unity of the persecuted,” said the strategist.

Moreover, as Sin Chew executive director Rita Sim put it, the ballot box is the only place where the Chinese are not subjected to quotas.

“To them, everything else has a quota – buying a house, getting a loan, university places. At the ballot box, it is one man, one vote. For sure, they are not going to spoil their vote,” said Sim.

‘New thinking’

But the Klang Valley sentiment is no longer about pragmatism, she said. It is about not being subjected to differential treatment. The X and Y Generations, especially, completely reject the notion of quotas.

It has been more than 30 years after the birth of the NEP and nothing that the Government says is going to make them change their mind about it. They see it as a form of prejudice and discrimination and those who are educated and have the means will have no qualms about voting with their feet.

Many in Umno are puzzled about this “new thinking” and they have been asking: Why are the Chinese so demanding these days? Don’t they understand that Malays are still lagging behind and need more help than them?

This sort of reasoning works for the baby boomers but not for Generation X (those born between 1960 and 1980) and Generation Y (born between 1980 and 2000). They can accept special treatment for the poor, handicapped, aged or single mothers but not race-based policies.

They see the annual controversy over government scholarships as a “clown show” and they are tired of it.

Finally, the Chinese sentiment is not “new thinking”. It has been there for some time and it has been building up over the years. It is being openly expressed in the Internet where anything and everything goes and also because there is a large number of young Chinese who feel strongly about being treated differently.

“In the urban places, (giving) funds for schools and projects during elections no longer works. The Chinese in the Klang Valley have gone beyond that. It’s this whole feeling about wanting to be treated equally and fairly. It is a big idea, so many aspects and so complex,” said Sim.

It is not even about DAP doing a great job as a government. They are not incompetent but they are not exceptional either. Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan is still riding on goodwill and every day there are one or several press statements from him on a host of issues, some of which sound as though they were Google-translated from Chinese.

The Klang Valley sentiment, said Sim, is basically about a population that is acutely conscious of their rights as citizens, they are clued in and they have options. The younger set especially look around them and they see their counterparts elsewhere asserting themselves politically, and they feel the power of their vote.

In the past, parents told their children who to support. Now the young tell their parents who to vote for.

The Singapore general election last month was a case in point. Singapore is a highly developed state with massive foreign reserves, a clean government and a competent and handsome Prime Minister. But the gap between the rich and the poor has grown, and Singaporeans are unhappy with the high-handedness of the Government, the rising costs of living and foreigners coming in to take their jobs.

They took their frustrations to the ballot box. The opposition took 40% of the popular vote and would have won more seats were it not for the GRC, or Group Representation Constituency system which weighs against the opposition.

And as Singaporeans have told the PAP, gratitude does not mean blind loyalty.

The Star’s columnist in Singapore Seah Chiang Nee described his country’s recent polls as the emergence of a “new brand of politics”.

Singapore is ahead of Malaysia on many counts but is way behind when it comes to politics.

The Klang Valley Chinese are probably not very different from their Singapore or Sarawak counterparts. They have reached a certain level of thinking on politics and their level of education and economic situation allows them to act on it.

The anti-Barisan cycle is still in play and few see it changing in any big way come the next general election.

The Chinese ground outside the Klang Valley, with the exception of Penang, has stabilised and even softened as evident from the recent by-elections.

But Klang Valley remains a hotbed of Chinese discontent and no one can quite tell how long this is going to play out. The Barisan may have to live with this phenomenon for a while more.

“The gap between the thinking of the Chinese and Malays about their place in the country is so wide,” said Sim.

Some in Umno think the Prime Minister should forget about the Chinese vote in the Klang Valley and focus on the Malay ground. They are quite confident of regaining at least five seats in KL based on a Malay swing. They feel that they have bent over backwards for the Chinese but their efforts have not been reciprocated.

But the Chinese side thinks that politics everywhere, from Singapore to the Middle-East, is moving towards concepts of greater equality and transparency. They say it is the Malay mindset that needs changing.

As far as the Klang Valley Chinese are concerned, the ball is now in the Malay court.

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