Speech by DAP Organising Secretary and Parliamentary Candidate for Bandar Melaka, Mr. Lim Kit Siang, at the second DAP General Elections Public Rally in Malacca at Chew Loy ( Hilir Gardens ) on Friday, 11th April 1969 at 9p.m.
I hereby give a solemn pledge to the people and voters of Bandar Melaka, that when elected Member of Parliament for this constituency on May 10, I will live and work in Malacca, to serve the people in Bandar Melaka.
One reason I have been sent here to contest the Bandar Melaka Parliamentary seat by the DAP Central Executive Committee is to mobilize and organise the people of Malacca behind the DAP banner to make Malacca one of the capitals of the Malaysian Malaysia campaign.
This was why I declined the Serdang State Constituency of Selangor, which the CEC offered me, because if I am to stand in Melaka Bandar Parliamentary constituency, I want to devote all my time, energy and effort in Malacca Town. If I were to stand in Serdang State seat in Selangor and the Bandar Melaka Parliamentary seat in Malacca, I will find that I am likely to neglect both, because Selangor and Malacca are separated by about 100 miles.
The Alliance is saying that if elected, I will not be able to serve the people of Bandar Melaka, because I am not from Malacca.
This is of course a falsehood. I am confident that I can serve Malacca better than any of my two opponents in the Parliamentary election. In the first place, there is no guarantee that if Mr. Koh Kim Leng is elected, he will serve the people of Malacca at all. Alliance and MCA Members of Parliament and State Assemblymen are more well-known for their service to their own petty self-interest, than to their constituents. MCA and Alliance members are in politics for the self-benefit, in terms of money, position and influence, and not for the service of the people and progress of the country. To the people in the Alliance and MCA, politics is the passport to self-enrichment.
We in the DAP do not subscribe to this selfish ideology. We believe that politics is the most honourable public service to fellow-men and country, to remove social injustice, racial discrimination and all forms of exploitation and inequality.
At a public rally in Petaling Jaya two nights ago, the Minister of Education, Inche Khir Johari criticized me for standing in Malacca. But before he does that, he should criticize his colleague, the President of MCA, Tun Tan Siew Sin, who fled from Malacca Town to a Malay constituency.
This is really ridiculous, where a President of a party which claimed to be the sole champion of the Chinese in this country, had to run away from his own constituency in Malacca town to a rural constituency, and rely completely on the UMNO to secure his election.
I ask Tun Tan Siew Sin to answer this question: Why is it he dare not contest in Bandar Melaka, his own town, and had to run away to a Malay constituency and depend on the UMNO to secure his election? At least I must give some credit to Tun Tan’s intelligence. Although he has made a mess of Malaysian economy and finances, at least he knows that if he had contested the Bandar Melaka Parliamentary constituency, he would have lost even his deposit.