Another one quits !

Last week, it was former Jelutong MP Datuk Lee Kah Choon and now it is former assemblyman Lim Boo Chang.

What these two men have in common? Well, for one thing, Lee has relinquished all of his party posts in Gerakan and will only remain as a member. Lim has also given up all of his party posts but he went a step further, he also gave up his membership in MCA.

So, what's going on? Something is really, really wrong for these two senior politicians to suddenly decide to 'give up' and 'move on'. Lee was one of the Gerakan candidates for the CM post but he got voted out just like the rest of his colleagues in Penang.

His reasons for resigning from all posts? Because he

"felt responsible for the dismal elections results"

However, a little birdie told me that this is not the real reason. The main reason is due to bad blood between him and Gerakan acting president Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon. Seems like Lee had a lot of disagreements with Koh and Lee had not agreed with many of the previous state government's policies and stand.

It seems that even during the elections campaign, Lee and Koh were not on good terms but they had to pretend to be buddy-buddy for the sake of campaigning. Koh had only mentioned Lee as one of the possible CM candidates at that time to divert attention to help Dr Teng. Yep, the ground sentiments, even in the initial stages, were so bad for Dr Teng that if he was to be named as the only Gerakan's CM candidate, the chances of him losing would be higher! Now, we all know the strategy didn't work a bit considering ALL Gerakan candidates in Penang lost!

Anyway, the feud between Lee and Koh is well-known amongst Gerakan members. Lee had wanted to do a lot of things for the people, some of it may even be against Umno, but Koh was just too lily-livered to actually do anything. Thus, there were shouting matches and swearing (or so I heard) when those two met.

My guess is that Lee will now be working closely with the grassroots to gather more support and by the time party elections come around, he may just contest Koh for the top post! Chia (Kwang Chye) move aside, you have a tougher competition if you think you are going up.

Then, we move on to Boo Chang. Now, this lawyer cum politician is a frog. He jumped from Gerakan to MCA after the 1999 elections. So, it isn't all that surprising that he decided to quit MCA now.

His reasons for quitting? This is basically his resignation letter which says it all:

"I am very disappointed, fed-up and tired of the ever-unceasing, complex and unhealthy internal squabbles of the MCA and wish to resign as its member and to relinquish all my party posts with immediate effect,"

Now, why aren't I surprised? And why is he complaining when he is part of the unhealthy internal squabblers in the past!

The only thing I am wondering now is whether he now plans to join Pakatan Rakyat or simply retire from politics forever? Well, we shall see, huh?