Samy Vellu resigns as MIC president
UPDATED @ 03:42:55 PM 06-12-2010
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 6 — Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu officially stepped down today as MIC’s president after leading the party for almost 31 years.
In a crowded room at the party’s headquarters, Samy Vellu told reporters that he had earlier submitted his resignation letter effective today.
“The moment I leave this room, I am no longer the president,” he said.
His resignation today paves the way for his deputy Datuk G. Palanivel to take over the MIC leadership as the party seeks to regain support from the Indian community in the 13th general election.
“I don’t think life has ended yet because there are too many things to do. I will do many other things. To me getting out of MIC as the president does not mean that I cannot help the Indian community,” he added.
Samy Vellu (picture) also confirmed that he will remain as an ordinary party member.
“I will help the party to achieve our objective in winning the seats that are given to the Indian community,” he said.
His resignation today paves the way for his deputy Datuk G. Palanivel to take over the MIC leadership as the party seeks to regain support from the Indian community in the 13th general election.
MIC vice-president and Human Resources Minister Datuk Dr S. Subramaniam would assume the number two post.
Samy Vellu said he was confident the party’s new leadership will be able to regain support from the community.
“I feel very happy that I am leaving my job to Palanivel, and Palanivel will leave his job to Subramaniam. I have cleared my head for the last 10 days because I know that the time has come and that there should be a leadership change, and the leadership change should look into the needs that are arising now. Also the political challenges that we face in the country and we need to work very hard to win back all the Indians to Barisan Nasional,” he said.
He said the party must prepare itself before Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak calls for snap elections.
“I think it is slowly happening and we need to expedite the process and then we can be ready for the 13th general election. We don’t have to wait for the announcement but we prepare ourselves and set up our machinery and then we will be ready when the moment comes,” he said.
He was also confident that Palanivel would be able to transform the party since he is a party veteran.
“Within six months, he has the capacity to face it and it is work that has to be done by all of us and not only the president,” he said.
Samy Vellu said he wants to be remembered for bringing education to the Indian community.
“I want to be remembered that when I took over this party, I thought of many things for the community. First of all, I thought that we should concentrate on the educational possibilities that we could give to the Indian community so we formed the MIED (Maju Institute of Educational Development ) and educated about 13,000 graduates in the country. With the third college, we have educated about 43,000 youngsters and from them 13,000 are Chinese and 30,000 are Indians.
“Then we built the university which is helping the Indian, Chinese and the Malay communities. It is a university for all,” he said.
He said he worked hard to make the community understand that there are “opportunities from them to come up in life.”
“If they don’t try then I don’t think that they can do it,” he said.
However, despite his efforts, Samy Vellu admitted that the Indians are still behind compared to the Malays and Chinese.
“The major problem affecting the Indian community is modernisation of their minds. Mind modernisation and thinking of the future. Thinking of educating their children to see that they become better than their parents. Also saving the money that they have and changing their lifestyle like other Malaysians,” he said.
Samy Vellu defended the party’s management of Maika Holdings and blamed it on the country’s poor economic state.
“Maika Holdings didn’t succeed because it started at a time when everything was down. When the whole economic status of the country was going down, that is the time that we started and we struggled because we don’t have any support from anybody. I had support neither from the government or anyone.
“Even though we had hundreds millions, it was not simply to do business unless you had the opportunity to do business. However I am happy because we are the only company that has been able to return money to the people who have contributed the money,” he said.
He also did not deny reports that he will accept a position as an ambassador-at-large offered by the government.
“I will move very fast. In future, I would not use cars but will use airplanes because I will be travelling to other countries,” he said when asked what will be his next move after his resignation.
