Speech by DAP Organising Secretary, Mr. Lim Kit Siang, to the Johore DAP State Committee at its monthly meeting held at the Muar DAP Branch premises on Sunday, 1st September 1968 at 11 a.m.
The Central Executive Committee has formed an elections bureau to make preparations for the forthcoming general elections.
The membership of the bureau are: Dr. Chen Man Hin (Party Chairman) Mr. Goh Hock Guan (Secretary-General) Daing Ibrahim bin Othman and Dr. K.S. Das (Deputy Secretaries-General) and Mr. Lim Kit Siang (Organising Secretary).
The DAP elections bureau will make an assessment of the DAP’s election chances in every State and Parliamentary constituency in the country, and forward its findings to the Central Executive Committee.
The elections bureau will also finalise preparations to complete the establishment of the DAP Elections machinery and short-list potential candidates for the party in the next election.
The Democratic Action Party is determined to make an impact in the next elections, to lay a secure basis for greater electoral success in 1974.
We have no intention of doing, for instance, what other opposition parties did in the last elections, in going in for short-lived glamour and euphoria by fielding a long list of candidates, who are slaughtered on polling day.
The United Democratic Party, for instance, fielded 27 Parliamentary candidates, won only one, while 14 of its candidates lost their deposits. In the State elections, the UDP fielded 66 candidates, won only four, while 35 of them lost their deposits.
The DAP will only put up candidates in areas where we are likely to win, and only when we have the suitable candidates. Qualifications for DAP candidates are: honesty, moral uprightness, incorruptibility, dedication and complete devotion to the cause of a democratic socialist and Malaysian Malaysia.
The next general elections will be a critical election, because it may be the last chance to save parliamentary democracy in Malaysia.
By 1971, the British troops would have withdrawn, and the Malayan Communist Party ready to mount their second insurrection, if they had not already done so.
If in the next elections, the democratic opposition cannot improve on the 1964 performance, then the people will lose hope in the ability of the constitutional and democratic process to bring about cultural, economic, social and political equality for all races in this country. When that happens, the MCP and those who advocate violence and the bayonet will become the champions of the suppressed, the oppressed and the underdog.
We in the DAP want to prevent this from happening, as a communist solution in Malaysia is no solution. This is because communist revolution in Malaysia must degenerate into a racial bloodbath. The DAP will therefore redouble our work to get our message to an ever larger number of Malaysians, to wake them up from their indifference and tidak-apathy attitude.
We are confident that with people’s help, the DAP will emerge as the largest and strongest opposition in the next elections, and speak and champion the aspirations of the new generation of Malaysians.
Audited on 2021-04-21.