Speech by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Petaling, Lim Kit Siang, when officially declaring open the Selangor DAP State Annual Convention held in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, 31st August 1980 at 10a.m.
DAP launches Cultural Revolution without Red Guards to ready the Party for the Challenges of the Eighties
The DAP is at present undergoing a Cultural Revolution in the Party, which involves not only a major shake-up organizationally, but also the political attitudes of party leaders and members, to ready the Party for the Challenges of the Eighties.
The DAP Cultural Revolution involves a rethinking of Party objectives and policies, a reaffirmation of commitment by Party leaders and members to the ideals and objectives of the Party, a remotivation of all Party men and women to the Party cause, a re-political education of party membership, a major overhaul of party organisation and machinery, the infusion of new blood into the Party for all stages of the Party, a upgrading of discipline and the redefinition of Party responsibilities and tasks.
The DAP Cultural Revolution however is a Cultural Revolution without Red Guards, as the DAP Central Executive Committee cannot permit chaos and anarchy to afflict the Party. Re-thinking, attitudinal changes and organizational overhaul must come through controlled programme of change and reform.
In this Cultural Revolution without Red Guards, State Committees and branch committees are expected to redouble their efforts to strengthen and broaden the Party’s support and base, to so deeply entrench the roots of the DAP into the mass consciousness that is not possible for our political opponents to uproot them.
Major Decisions of CEC at Cameron Highlands
The Party Central Executive Committee, at its Cameron Highlands meeting early this month, took series of major policy decisions on the party’s tasks in the 1980s.
The CEC set up by a Policy Review Sub-Committee which has been entrusted with the task of drafting a Declaration of the Aims and Objectives of the Party for the 1980s, which would be presented to the Party’s 15th Anniversary Special Party Congress next year for adoption.
The 15th Anniversary DAP Special Congress would be held in Penang, to highlight the importance of the political battlefield of Penang for next general elections.
The DAP Central Executive Committee has also decided that DAP’s candidates for the next general elections would be required to declare their assets to the Party before they would be nominated by the Party. This is the first step taken by the Party to insist on a strict principle of accountability of elected officials to the people, and the importance that elected MPs and State Assemblymen must not be seen to be interested only in using political office as a stepping stone to self-enrichment and aggrandisement.
The DAP CEC, which decided on a major organisational overhaul and stepped-up publicity activities to disseminate party objectives to the public, has also given the approval for the holding of regular political classes and training camps as an essential condition for the constant upgrading of political consciousness and knowledge of party cadres.
Three major political leadership training work camp would be held in December this year, one Penang, Perlis, Kedah and Perak; another in Port Dickson, for Selangor, Pahang, Kelantan, Terengganu, Negri Sembilan, Malacca and Johore; and another in Kuching, for Sarawak and Sabah.
A one-day Seminar on the Fourth Malaysia Plan for DAP MPs, State Assemblymen and CEC members would be held in Kuala Lumpur on Oct.18.
It is my hope that in about five years’ time, political education in the Party would be so systematised that we can found a DAP Political School.
DAP establishes a Consumer Affairs Bureau under chairmanship of Sdr.N.Shanmugam
To meet the challenges of the Eighties, the DAP has set several now bureaus and committees. A new bureau is the DAP National Consumer Affairs Bureau, to join forces with consumer groups to protect the interests of consumers from all forms of exploitation.
The DAP Consumer Affairs Bureau is headed by Penang DAP State Committee Member, Sdr.N.Shanmugam. The members are:
Chairman: Sdr.N.Shanmugam
V.Chairman: Sdr.Yusof Bador
Secretary: Sdr.Lai Keun Ban
Asst.Secretary: Sdr.K.Ponnudurai
Members: Sdr.Wong Seng Ai (Sarawak State Consumer Affairs Secretary)
Sdr.Kang San Chuan
DAP calls for the official ending of the separation of Malaysians into bumiputeras and non-bumiputeras to make a serious effort at nation building on the occasion of 23rd National Day
One of the chief causes of national division Malaysia in the last 23 years is the separation of Malaysians into bumiputeras and non-bumiputeras. It is very difficult for Malaysian Chinese and Indian, who is born in Malaysia, particularly those born after Merdeka Day on August 31, 1957 (who will now be 23 years old) to find that although he is native born, knows of no other system of values apart from Malaysian ones inculcated through the national system of education, and has no other homeland apart from Malaysia, he is not accepted as a true and equal ‘son of the soil’, that somehow, he does not fully belong.
This great source of national friction and discord should be removed on the occasion of Malaysia’s 23rd National Day, in order to lay a firm basis for Malaysia’s nation building efforts particularly in the Eighties to solidify popular unity and resilience against any external attack, threat or pressure.
The natural division of Malaysians into the individual racial groups is sufficiently divisive, without having to invent a new category of compartmentalisation.
I call on the Prime Minister, Datuk Hussein Onn, to give this matter serious consideration – whether we are prepared to accept all Malaysians born after Merdeka Day on August 31, 1957 as ‘bumiputras’ regardless of race, religion, colour or culture.
If we can make such a common agreement, then a great step would have been taken in the 1980s to weld the diverse Malaysian people into one common nation.