Speech by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Petaling, Lim Kit Siang, at the DAP Perak State 1,500- People Dinner to celebrate the Party’s 15th Anniversary help at St. John’s Ambulance Hall, Ipoh, on Sunday, 12th July 1981 at 8p.m.
DAP calls for legislation requiring MPs or State Assemblymen to resign their seats to seek by-election when they resign or are expelled from their Party to ensure public honesty and integrity in political life.
The Gerakan President, Dr. Lim Keng Yaik, alleged in today’s papers that Perak MCA secretary, Peter Chin, had offered $50,000 as an inducement for a Gerakan branch chairman to resign from the Party and join the MCA.
The Process of buying and selling of politicians, treating politicians as no better than cattle in the market-place, has been going on years, involving the component parties in Barisan, including the Gerakan.
It is only in recent months that the Politics of Money has become intensified, and although the Gerakan had at first competed with MCA to buy over members and officials from other political parties, and from each other, the Gerakan has found that it could not compete and match the MCA in terms of funds and money-power.
It is only when the Gerakan found that it has no financial resources to compete with MCA in buying and selling of political opportunists that the Gerakan leaders are now shouting ‘Foul’!
In fact, the overwhelming majority of the Gerakan leaders were previously the leaders of MCA at both state and national levels, and were themselves the past masters of this politicial game of buying and selling while in MCA. Did they ever stand up in the MCA at both national and state levels to oppose this buying and selling of politicians from other parties?
What Malaysia needs is a clean, honest and incorruptible political arena- where there is no room for opportunists to make use of politics for their self gain or advancement. People who shout ‘foul’ when they could not out-buy or out-bid politicians from other parties, or from each other, cannot do anything to cleanse politics of its dirt and opportunism, for such people will practice exactly the same tricks if one day they find the finanacial means.
However, Dr. Lim Keng Yaik’s expose has only confirmed what the DAP leaders had been saying all these years, that there are those in the Barisan who specialize in looking out for the weaknesses and opportunism of politician leaders in other parties in order to suborn and buy them over.
In fact, there are those who join opposition politics in order to get a short-cut the spoils of office, as after being elected as an MP or State Assemblyman, they could then offer themselves to the highnest bidder.
The market price of a MP and Assemblyman keeps changing, like the stocks market. An Opposition Assemblyman who wishes to sell himself for money and a pot of gold easily fetch $300,000, while an MP’s starting asking price is $500,000.
Such buying and selling of politicians degardes the entire political process, and is the root cause of corruption in Malaysia.
If Dr. Lim Keng Yaik and the Gerakan have now become the new converts to clean, honest and incorruptible politics, then they should support the DAP’s demand all along that there sould be legislation to require any MP or State Assemblyman to resign his seat and seek re-election in a by-election should be resign or be sacked from the Party on whose platform he won election.
I therefore call on Dr. Lim Keng Yaik to declare whether he supports the DAP’s call for legislation to require MPs and State Assemblymen to resign their seats to seek by-election when they resign or are expelled from their Party to ensure public honest and integrity in political life in Malaysia.
Musa-Razaleigh election result
Last month’s UMNO Deputy President contest between Datuk Musa Hitam and Tengku Razaleigh should be a lesson to every Malaysian about the supremacy of politics over every other field, including finance and economic, for it is politics which will can and will determine other fields of national life, whether economics, education, culture or democracy.
When the Musa-Razaleigh contest started, there were many who expected Razaleigh to win. After all, Razaleigh had been named ‘ Bapa Ekonomi Bumiputra’, who was responsible for building up Bank Bumiputra, Pernas, Pertonas, and other schemes associated with bumiputra commercial and industrial upliftment.
Musa Hitam, however, won with a decisive majority of 205 votes, which demonstrate that the UMNO delegates, much as they welcome the economic goodies brought by Tengku Raazaleigh, decided that in the final analysis, it is politics which determine economics and finance, and not vice versa.
Recently, the MCA throughout the country had tried to create and manipulate a ‘holdings shares’ fever by among the Malaysian Chinese by promoting the belief that firstly, ‘holdings shares’ is a miracle money-maker, as an investment of $1,000 will multiply to $10,000; and secondly, that the mass buying of ‘holdings shares’ is the solution to securing a sound financial and economic stake and political future for Malaysian Chinese in 1990.
This if of course utter nonsense. For evenif today, a person can make $10,000 from holdings shares; tomorrow make another $20,000; there is nothing to prevent, day after from tomorrow, for these who wield political power to take away the $30,000 gains from ‘holdings shares’.
It is also utter nosence for anyone to belive that ‘holdings shares’ has become a sure money-spinner. If ‘holdings shares’ is so miraculous and could appreciate ten times its original value, I am sure all the MCA leaders at national, state and branch levels would have sold, mortgaged or pawned all their properties and assets and dump them in holdings shares. I do not believe that if ‘holdings shares’ are capable of multiplying ten times and a sure money-spinner, the MCA leaders would give the ordinary people a chance to invest, for they would want to monopolise the investment.
The ‘holdings shares’ fever has been created and manipulated by the MCa to enable some of its leaders to make rich at the ordianryy people’s expense. For instance, in Perak, three MCA officials, namely Chan Kit Chee, Tan Tiow bok and another, formed a holding company, Credik Holdings Bhd and in blatant violation of the company law, collected millions of dollars from the public as subscription to its shares.
Who is making who rich? The ordinary public making Chan Kit Chee, Tan Tiow Bok rich, or Chan Kit Chee, and Tan Tiow Bok making the people rich?