DAP Mps will be assigned their respective portfolios to specialise in next week

Press Statement by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General, MP for Tanjong and Assemblyman for Kampong Kolam, Lim Kit Siang, in Penang on Monday, August 25, 1986

DAP Mps will be assigned their respective portfolios to specialise in next week

Next week, the 24 DAP Mps will be assigned their respective portfolios to specialise in, so that they become experts in their particular areas of responsibility.

This is part of the party’s preparation to ensure high standard of performance from the 24 DAP MPs and 37 Assemblyman. Another party action in this regard is the formation of the DAP Constituency Service and Monitoring Committee under the chairmanship of Sdr. Lee Lam Thye. DAP Deputy Secretary-General and MP for Bukit Bintang.

The 24 DAP MPs and 37 Assemblyman will be meeting for two days in Cameron Highlands on Oct. 4 and 5 to prepare them for the beginning of the Parliamentary and State Assembly meetings.

Parliament will meet on Oct. 6, to swear in the new MPs and elect the speaker of Dewan Rakyat. On Oct. 7, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong will declare open Parliament with a Royal Address which will contain the Barisan Nasional Government’s first policy document after the August 3 general elections. From Oct. 8 onwards, Parliamentary debates will begin and the whole meeting will last 45 days or nine full weeks.

Call on Pairin to accept the Harris Salleh challenge to set up a Commission of Inquiry under Tan Sri Ahmad Nordin to into Berjaya and PBS Governments

Datuk Harris Salleh in the Star today said he repeated his challenge to PBS Chief Minister, Datuk Joseph Pairin Kitingan, to institute a commission of inquiry headed by Tan Sri Ahmad Nordin to look into the Berjaya and PBS Governments to expose their corruption, misdeeds or betrayal of the people.

I call on Datuk Pairin to accept the Harris Salleh challenge without any more ado, for the setting up of a Commission of Inquiry into the Berjaya Government of Harris Salleh had been one of the campaign promises of PBS in the various general elections and by-elections since Tambuan in Dec. 1984.

Datuk Joseph Pairin had previously said it was difficult to get members to sit on the Commission Inquiry. If this is indeed the real problem, I even volunteer to sit on the Commission of Inquiry heeded by Tan Sri Ahmad Nordin.

Datuk Pairin’s credibility will suffer if he does not respond positively to the challenge from Harris Salleh, especially as it was Pairin and PBS which had made this demand in the first place.

Federal Government should not be afraid to as certain the wishes of people Labuan and Sabah on Labuan issue

Harris Salleh is trying to re-write history when he claimed that the -gifting’ of Labuan to the Federal Government was done in a democratic manner, and after consultation of the people of Sabah and Labuan.

There should in fact be a full public inquiry as to how Labuan was ceded to the Federal Government, how the whims and fancies of one man – Datuk Harris Salleh – could deprive Sabah of Labuan and denied the people on island and the Sabah state their democratic right to decide their own destiny.

Under Datuk Harris Salleh, the Sabah Cabinet and Legislative Assembly was a mere rubber stamp. Datuk Harris Salleh has nothing to be proud of his ‘democratic’ ways in Sabah State Cabinet and Assembly, for if he were really democratic, he would not have been so decisively repudiated by the people of Sabah in the April 1985 general elections.

The Federal Government and Harris Salleh should not be afraid to ascertain the wishes of the people of Sabah and Labuan on the future of Labuan. A great wrong was done to the people of Sabah and Labuan by the arbitrary, undemocratic and most high-handed manner in which Labuan was gifted to Federal Government, as if Labuan was part of the personal fief of Harris Salleh.

Federal leaders should not talk about constitutional crisis when it is a question of allowing the people of Sabah and Labuan to have the opportunity to express their views about the Labuan question, and whether Labuan should remain in Federal Territory or revert to Sabah.

Harris Salleh should explain to Sabah and Labuan people why he gifted Labuan to Federal Government, when the Selangor Government was compensated $ 30 billion for the cession of Kuala Lumpur as Federal Territory.

Was this action by Harris Salleh an attempt to buy ‘insurance’ with the Federal Government, to give him a free hand in his autocratic ways in Sabah?

I hope Datuk Pairin and the PBS Government will honour their election pledge and the resolution of the PBS Congress for a referendum on the Labuan issue. The DAP will extend to Datuk Pairin its fullest support on the Labuan referendum, which is one of the 20-point programmers of the DAP’s 1986 general elections manifesto.