Speech by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, at the Perak DAP State Interim Committee meeting held in Ipoh on Tuesday, 28th May 1991 at 8 pm.
The first meaningful task of the National Unity Advisory Panel is to find out why its predecessors in the past 25 years had been utterly ineffective and irrelevant to the problems and issue of national unity.
The first meaningful task of the newly-formed 33-member National Unity Advisory Panel is to find out why its predecessors in the past 25 years had been utterly ineffective and irrelevant to the problems and issue of national unity.
The National Unity Advisory Panel should make public this Report to convince the Malaysian public that it is different from the National Unity Ministry and National Unity Boards in the past quarter of a century which existed only in name, and were never taken seriously by anyone in the Government.
They were so irrelevant and inconsequential that they became a joke and the subject of ridicule in Parliament both in the 1970s and 1980s.
In fact, if any scholar is commissioned to study as to what contribution the various predecessors of the National Unity Advisory Panel had made to national unity in the past 25 years, he will have to submit a blank paper!
The newly-formed National Unity Advisory Panel cannot be different from its predecessors, especially as it has got off to a very bad start, for even such a marginal party like MCA does not take it seriously. This is probably why there is not a single MCA nominee on the National Unity Advisory Panel.
Probably the second thing the National Unity Advisory Panel should do is to ensure that there is unity among the Barisan Nasional leaders and component parties.
If the National Unity Advisory Panel cannot deal with the issue of Malaysian Chinese Cultural City, it only highlights its ineffectiveness and irrelevance.
Can the National Unity Advisory Panel bring about unity between the Gerakan leaders like Datuk Alex Lee, the Vice Chairman of the Panel, and the MCA leaders by reaching a consensus on the issue of the Malaysian Chinese Cultural City as proposed by MCA?
Or will the National Unity Advisory Panel agree with Alex Lee and differ with the MCA on the Malaysian Chinese Cultural City issue?
Would the National Unity Advisory Board discuss the Malaysian Chinese Cultural City issue, because of its serious implications on the issue of national unity?
If the National Unity Advisory Board cannot deal with the issue of the Chinese Cultural City, it only highlights its ineffectiveness and irrelevance.
It may be fortunate that the National Unity Advisory Board will not be taking a stand on the Malaysian Chinese Cultural City. From the composition of the Panel, with especially Alex Lee as Vice Chairman, the Panel would most likely give a negative stand and provide full backing to the opposition of Alex Lee to the Malaysian Chinese Cultural City!
DAP call on Dr. Mahathir to ensure that MPs get at least one month to study the Second
OPP before debate.
Parliamentary which meets from June 17 next month for 19 days will debate the Second Outline Perspective Plan (OPP) 1991-2000 and the Sixth Malaysia Plan.
The announcements that have been made about the OPP by both MCA and Gerakan leaders are quite disturbing. MCA for instance has announced that there will be no independent monitoring mechanism to ensure that there will be no deviation in the implementation of the new national economic policy in the 1990s. Gerakan, on the other hand, had announced that the NEP policy of ethnic quotas and percentages will be continued in the Second OPP.
From the MCA and Gerakan announcements, it would appear that the recommendations and report of the National Economic Consultative Council (NECC) had been rejected by the Barisan Nasional leadership.
DAP calls on the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamed, to ensure that MPs from all political parties, whether Barisan Nasional or the Opposition, to have at least one month to study the Second OPP before debate.
MPs should also be given copies of the NECC Report.
MPs should also be given at least one month because it is not just them, but the Malaysian public too, who must be given the fullest opportunity to give their views on the Second OPP and the NECC Report.