Speech by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Petaling. Lim Kit Siang, at the Malacca State Committee meeting at Malacca DAP premises at No.33A Jalan Munshi Abdullah, Malacca, on Sunday, 3rd August 1980 at 10a.m.
DAP Malacca should aim at attacking 8 Barisan State Assembly seats for the 1983 General Elections
It is now more than two years since the last general elections in 1978, and it is time for all State Committees to work out strategy and tactics for the next general elections, as well as the objectives to be aimed at for Project 1983 in each state.
For the State of Malacca, DAP’s Project 1983 target and objectives must not only to preserve our Parliamentary and 4 State Assembly seats, but also to concentrate on attacking eight Barisan Nasional State Assembly seats, namely Pringgit, Machap, Batang Melaka, Tabong Naning, Nyalas, Ayer Panas, Bukit Rambai and Tanjong Minyak. Out of these eight selected areas, special attention should be given to Pringgit, Machap and Batang Melaka.
I am confident that with early planning, effective organisation, united team work, the DAP should be able to make considerable advances than our present Assembly strength in the next elections.
The DAP in Malacca, and in the rest of Malaysia, must try our utmost to establish a firmer footing in the rural areas, to turn ourselves from a urban-based party into a party which draws strength and support from both urban and rural areas. This is a formidable task, but with persistence, perseverance and tenacity, I am sure that we will be able to make headway.
DAP calls on Government to announce massive low-cost housing as the main feature of the Fourth Malaysia Plan 1981-85 to solve the acute housing shortage in country
One of the biggest failures of the Barisan National Government, whether at the national or state level, is in the area of housing, where the Government had failed to provide cheap housing to meet the individual needs of Malaysians.
Housing had become a crisis for low-income Malaysians, as there is not only the problem of housing shortage, there is also the equally serious problem of spiraling housing prices making it completely beyond the means of the ordinary Malaysians.
I call on the Prime Minister, Datuk Hussein Onn, to give a top level directive that the solution of housing shortage should be the main feature of the Fourth Malaysia Plan. 1981-1985, to prevent the social and economic problems in the urban areas reach crisis proportion.
Ever since the creation of the Ministry of Housing, the Ministers of Housing had been more adept in many speeches and statements about housing than in getting houses built within the means of the ordinary Malaysians.
State Governments are also responsible, because of their red-type and bureaucracy which is a fruitful source of malpractices and corruption, for obstructing housing development.
A new sense of urgency is needed by both the Federal and State Governments to solve the acute problem of housing shortage in the country.