KUALA LUMPUR: The ethnic Chinese party in Malaysia's ruling coalition has sacked a top leader embroiled in a sex scandal, setting the stage for infighting that could harm its public support.
Source: AFP.
- The Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) decided overnight to expel Dr.Chua Soi Lek, who was forced to quit as health minister last year after being caught on tape having sex with an unidentified woman in a hotel room.
- Chua, 62, was the deputy president of the MCA, a key member of Prime Minister Najib Razak's Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition government, representing the community that makes up 26 per cent of the Muslim-majority population.
- "We did so with a heavy heart after giving much consideration to the damage inflicted upon the party image brought about by his sex scandal featured in the DVD," MCA president Ong Tee Keat told reporters, referring to the sacking.
- The move came as the Barisan Nasional attempts to regain support from minority Chinese and Indians, many of whom deserted the coalition in elections last year.
- In the wake of the sex scandal, Chua resigned as the party's number three but was voted back in by party members to the number-two post in elections last year.
- That set off a running battle with Ong, whom Chua said felt threatened by his support, and in recent months the sex scandal was revived with new questions over the legality of the acts depicted in the tape.
- Chua, married with three children, has previously accused his political "enemies" of orchestrating the release of the video, which was widely circulated.
- Political analyst James Chin said the sacking of Chua was a "wrong move" that would throw Barisan into further disarray. It is already plagued by infighting within another component party that represents Indians.
- "The Chinese community will see that a deeply divided MCA can't play the role of being their representatives in the government," Chin, a political analyst at the Monash University campus in Kuala Lumpur, told
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