Speech by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, when declaring open the general elections seminar for DAP Seberang Prai Branches held at the Lodge, Butterworth on Sunday, 22nd April 1990 at 9.30 a.m.
Kit Siang gives final warning to Liong Sik that the DAP will expose and attack the MCA as a party of liars if MCA Ministers and leaders continue with their vicious and baseless campaign against the DAP for wanting to create an Islamic State in Malaysia
Since the MCA 41th Anniversary celebrations in Kuala Lumpur last month, the MCA President, Datuk Dr. Ling Liong Sik, MCA Deputy President, Dr. Lee Kim Sai, and other MCA Minister, Deputy Ministers and national leaders had conducted a vicious campaign to destroy the image and credibility of the DAP with their baseless attacks on the DAP for wanting to create an Islamic State in Malaysia.
Week after week, the MCA leaders have been going round the country repeating this big lie, that DAP wants to create an Islamic State by co-operating with PAS. MCA leaders have become the most fervent and devoted disciples of Hitler’s Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbles, who believed that if you want to tell a lie, it must be a big lie, and if you repeat a big lie a thousand times, then there is a great likelihood that somebody will believe it!
MCA claims to be the sole political representative of the five million Malaysian Chinese, and inheritor of 5,000 years of Chinese civilization, and yet it is basing its entire strategy for the next general elections on one Big Lie.
MCA has become so bankrupt politically that it is basing its entire elections strategy on a Big Lie
This is the first time in Malaysian history that a political party has become so bankrupt of ideas that it is basing its entire election strategy to win Parliamentary and State Assembly seats, and to keep their Ministerial positions, on a Big Lie.
I am giving the MCA President, Datuk Dr. Ling Liong Sik, a last warning that if the MCA Ministers and leaders continue with their vicious and baseless campaign against the DAP for wanting to create an Islamic State, the DAP will launch a nation-wide campaign to expose and attack the MCA as a Party of Lie, and the MCA leaders, right from the MCA President downwards, as political liars.
MCA leaders talk so much about ethical and moral leadership, but unfortunately, they are the worst examples of completely unethical and immoral leaders in Malaysia.
MCA Ministers disgrace and dishonour the dignity, character and integrity of the Chinese people in Malaysia
It is very sad that the MCA Ministers and leaders do not realise that in launching the vicious and baseless campaign against the DAP for wanting to create an Islamic State, they in fact disgrace and dishonour the dignity, character and integrity of the Chinese people in Malaysia.
The purpose of the vicious MCA campaign is to tell the Chinese voters in Malaysia that DAP leaders like Dr. Chen Man Hin, Lee Lam Thye, Dr. Tan Seng Giaw, Chian Heng Kai, Liew Ah Kim, myself and others have no political principles and are prepared to sell out the rights of the Chinese community and agree to the establishment of an Islamic State, just to get re-elected as Member of Parliament or State Assemblymen.
MCA Ministers and leaders must admit that in Malaysian politics today, the only Malaysian Chinese political leaders who have the respect not only of the Malaysian Chinese, but all other communities, in having political convictions and principles, who are prepared to sacrifice self-interest to public interest, can only be found in the DAP.
These DAP leaders have gone in and out of detention for their political beliefs and the interests of the people, unlike MCA leaders who went in and out of jail because of criminal breach of trust and gross cheating of the hard-earned savings of the people!
When DAP leaders make public commitments, as for instance at the Tien How Temple Meeting on the issue of the Chinese primary school senior appointment of staff not versed in mandarin in October 1987, we say what we mean, and we mean what we say. We do not run away, like MCA leaders, to escape arrest or avoid fulfillment of their public commitments.
If MCA leaders succeeds in their vicious and baseless campaign against the DAP leaders for wanting to create an Islamic State, then the MCA would have succeeded in dragging down the DAP to the MCA level.
This would mean the MCA would have succeeded in projecting the message and image that there are no Malaysian Chinese political leaders in the country who are honest, dedicated and honourable, that the DAP leaders are no different from the MCA leaders!
Is this underlying MCA message in their vicious campaign against the DAP, that there are no Malaysian Chinese political leaders who are honest, dedicated and honourable, true? If this is the case, then the Chinese is not a race of people who deserved respect or to be proud of.
This is why I said that what the MCA campaign seeks to do goes beyond attacking the image and credibility of the DAP, but in fact, is a disgraceful and dishonourable attack on the dignity, character and integrity of the Chinese people in Malaysia.
Why should any DAP-PAS co-operation be on PAS terms, and not on DAP terms?
Liong Sik, Kim Sai and the other MCA leaders charged that as the DAP is co-operating with Semangat 46, and Semangat 46 is co-operating with PAS, therefore DAP is co-operating with PAS. And as PAS wants to create an Islamic State, thereefore DAP supports the Islamic State.
If DAP co-operates with PAS (which we have denied clearly and unequivocally), why should it be the DAP supporting the PAS objectives, and not the other way round – PAS supporting the DAP objectives, which includes the uncompromising stand that there can be no Islamic State for a multi-racial and multi-religious Malaysia?
Is it completely beyond the understanding and grasp of MCA leaders that if there is such a so-called co-operation, it will be on the terms of the DAP and not on the terms of PAS? Is this because in UMNO’s terms, and never on MCA’s terms? And so, MCA Ministers believe that DAP leaders will be as compromising, self-serving and backboneless as the MCA leaders?
I have been detained twice under the Internal Security Act for my political beliefs, and other DAP leaders have similarly suffered for their political convictions. Are we people who will enter into a co-operation with other political parties on other people’s terms?
DAP leaders are not like MCA leaders, who can only lose their Datuk-ship, which they can still get back after some begging.
MCA’s co-operation with another political party means MCA conceding and surrendering political principles
From the MCA’s own political experience in Barisan Nasional, I do not really blame the MCA Ministers if they can only think of one basis for political co-operation between different political parties, and in this case, for MCA to progressively concede and surrender its political objectives.
It can never occur to them that there could in fact be three different basis for co-operation between two political parties.
I will take the example of DAP and PAS, although I want to make it very clear that up to now, the DAP had no discussion, understanding or co-operation, whether direct or indirect, with PAS.
If the DAP and PAS should one day co-operate, it can take three forms:
Firstly, in the form familiar to MCA leaders, i.e. for the DAP to accept the PAS objective of an Islamic State, whether short-term or long-term, and give up our own political principles and objectives.
Secondly, for PAS to give up its Islamic State objective and accept the DAP’s political stand that an Islamic State is totally unsuitable and unacceptable in a country like Malaysia.
Can Liong Sik and Kim Sai explain why the second scenario is impossible, while the first scenario is a definite certainty? I agree that if the DAP is led by these two MCA Ministers, the first scenario will definitely come about.
But could Liong Sik and Kim Sai envisage a third basis for co-operation between DAP and PAS?
This is where DAP and PAS maintain their respective political objectives, but co-operate on the most pressing issues of the moment, and this is to save democracy, restore human rights and fight for justice.
The big issues of the co-operation in the general elections will be democracy, human right and justice for the people and not an Islamic State. Therefore a vote by a Chinese or Indian voter for PAS in the general elections will not be a vote for an Islamic State but a vote against the abuses of power, the violation of human rights and the end to the corruption, economic exploitation and financial scandals in the country.
In such a relationship, although PAS still maintains its objective of an Islamic State, PAS recognises that no Islamic State could be established in Malaysia without the consent and support of the Chinese, Indians, Kadazans and Ibans (as well as Malays, the majority of whom are opposed to an Islamic State). PAS also accepts that the issue in the general elections is not Islamic State, but democracy and justice, and a vote for a PAS candidate by a Chinese or an Indian voter is not a voter for an Islamic State.
MCA Ministers and leaders cannot envisage these different political scenarios because they have only one-track mind, which is to move further and further away from the political mainstream towards the politics of marginalisation.
I feel sorry for the MCA Ministers and leaders, whose political mind and vision are so narrow, shallow and limited, and who could stoop so low as to base an entire, party national elections strategy on a Big Lie.