Few days ago, Chinese dailies Sin Chew Daily and Oriental Daily reported that Transport Minister Chan Kong Choy has resigned prior to leaving for Australia (Sin Chew Daily) but it was rejected (Oriental Daily) by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
It was speculated that the few possible prime reasons that led to his "resignation" involving "official, personal and health reasons" as reported by Malaysiakini and Oriental Daily respectively.
- Official – Public pressure over the RM4.6 billion Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal.
- Personal – Kong Choy fell sick after seeing too many corpses during his last month’s visit to the scene of the worst bus accident in the nation’s history.
- Health – Kong Choy was diagnosed with cancer.
However, Selangor executive councillor Tang See Hang denied that Kong Choy was on leave due to cancer, but rather due to work overload. This explanation is unlikely to be true as he started to go on medical leave on 29th August, which is 2 days before the 50th nationhood celebration, one of the most important occasion for politicians at his level as a cabinet minister and the MCA’s deputy president.
Furthermore, if it’s really due to work overload or any other slight sickness, he could have stayed back in Malaysia rather than seeking medical treatment overseas, which otherwise is a strong indication of his poor health condition.
Resignation is imminent?
Interestingly, it was also reported that his boss Ong Ka Ting wasn’t informed of the decision to resign and when asked to confirm the resignation, he neither admit nor deny the question.
My personal take is that, I don’t believe speculation of his resignation is being used as a bargaining chip by MCA against Umno, in which MCA’s political position being weakened by several incidents lately and hence the resignation of Kong Choy. If there is anyone to resign from MCA, I’d expect the move to come from the MCA president himself than anyone else in the party.
To this, I’ve a valid ground to believe that his positions to remain status-quo as of now, at least until after this coming general election, in order to avoid internal political fight within BN coalition and MCA for the minister and deputy president posts respectively, which might affect the perceived unity among ruling parties as well as to preserve the feel-good status among the people, thanks to recent announcement of the "2008 election-friendly budget".
Or in another word, his resignation has actually been accepted and will only be effective when the right time comes. Soon, we’ll know whether it’s going to be a lose-gain game for MCA-Umno.
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they can all resign, including the PM.
Resigning is too good for them. They should be sacked. and then held to account with a full and proper investigation into
any and all improprieties.