By Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Thursday, January 11, 1990:
The Vijandran pornographic videotape scandal is blowing up to become the Barisan nasional pornographic videotape burning scandal – DAP calls for sacking of Vijandran and resignation of Tan Sri Abu Talib as Attorney-General
With the statement by the Attorney-General, Tan Sri Abu Talib Othman yesterday, the Vijandran pornographic videotape scandal has blown up to become an even bigger Barisan Nasional pornographic videotape burning tape scandal!
I have no doubt that if anyone should commission a public opinion poll to ascertain how many people believe the Attorney-General’s statement yesterday, only a tiny handful, with D.P Vijandran in the lead, would be found who are prepared to accept the Attorney-General’s statement as the last word on the Vijandran pornographic videotape scandal while some 99 percent of the people would have no faith in both the credibility and veracity of his statement.
The Attorney-General’s statement may have been intended to end the public controversy on the Vijandran pornographic videotape scandal, but it will only have the opposite effect: blowing uo the scandal to a larger scale- and in this case, implicating not just Vijandran only, but the entire Barisan Nasional government in an attempt to cover-up the scandal.
What Tan Sri Abu Talib said yesterday had not in any way exonerated D.P.Vijandran, but on the contrary, had pointed an even stronger accusing finger at Vijandran, and reinforced all public suspicious that Vijandran has a lot of things to hide in the whole episode of 11 videotape and four envelops of 2,000 photographs in his safe which was burgled in broad daylight in his home on 3rd August 1988.
If anyone thinks that the burning of the 11 videotapes and 2,000 photographs would burn away the entire scandal, he cannot be more wrong. In fact, this revelation of the Attorney-General has put Tan Sri Abu Talib in the dock himself in having misconducted himself and abused his prepogatives, raising the question as to the motives behind the decision to destroy the tapes and the photographs.
If the 11 videotapes and four envelops of 2,000 photographs are harmless tapes and pictures, why weren’t they returned to their rightful owner- D.P.Vijandran? Or when did the Police start a new public service of destroying videotapes and photographs for members of the public for free?