DAP will have no comments to make on members who resign to MCA newspapers before resigning to the Party

by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary- General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Thursday, May 9, 1991:

DAP will have no comments to make on members who resign to MCA newspapers before resigning to the Party.

As I continue to receive calls from the press to ask for my comments on the reported resignation of Sdr. Lee Lam Thye from the DAP, I want to reiterate what I said yesterday when I was asked this question by the press during my visit to the Sungei Buloh fireworks factory explosion site.

There is a completely new development recently where MCA newspapers like the Star and Malayan Tong Bao seems to have more information about the DAP than the DAP itself. There appears to be also a new development where DAP members resign to MCA newspapers rather than resigning properly to the DAP.

I have not even now received the letter of resignation from Sdr. Lee Lam Thye. However, henceforth the DAP does not propose to make any comment whatsoever on members who resign to MCA newspapers first before resigning to the Party.

Reporters who wish to have more information on such cases should contact either Star or Malayan Tong Bao for more information.

The MCA leadership must be very pleased to have achieved such a ‘coup’ where DAP members resign to MCA newspapers first before resigning to the DAP. I can understand the joy of the MCA leaders to be able to claim some sort of a ‘coup’ after being so decisively rejected in the October 1990 general elections; and after the bungle after bungle after the general elections – like confessing that they do not know what the Chinese in Malaysia want, and have to engage professional
consultants to find out the answer for them.

At least, the MCA leaders can now claim that they know what a few DAP members want, if the reports in the MCA newspapers about the purported resignation of a few DAP members are true.