Five question for Lee Kim Sai on the 4As-2Cs issue

By Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Wednesday, November 13, 1991:

Five question for Lee Kim Sai on the 4As-2Cs issue

MCA Deputy President and Health Minister, Datuk Lee Kim Sai, repeated in Bukit Mertajam yesterday that he was willing to go to prison for breaching the Official Secrets Act by showing me Cabinet documents to prove that the Cabinet decided in May that Chinese primary school pupils with 4As-2Cs would be promoted automatically to Form One and inviting me to go to his Ministry to look at the Cabinet paper.

I have five questions for Lee Kim Sai.

Firstly, why didn’t he declare that he was prepared to risk going to prison by breaching the Official Secrets Act by making public this Cabinet paper when top Education Ministry official publicly disputed that the government had made a 4As-2Cs decision?

Secondly, if the Cabinet had made a firm decision on the 4As-2Cs matter in May, why was it necessary to bring this issue back to the Cabinet on Oct. 30?

Thirdly, isn’t it true that if not for the intense pressure mounted by the DAP both inside and outside Parliament on the 4As-2Cs decision, the decision of the Cabinet on Oct.30 on the 4As-2Cs could be a very different outcome?

Fourthly, if the October 30 Cabinet meeting had reversed the 4As-2Cs decision, would Lee Kim Sai have dared to defy the entire Cabinet and the Prime Minister and risk going to prison by revealing the May Cabinet paper?

Fifthly, isn’t Lee Kim Sai aware that under the draconian and undemocratic Official Secrets Act (OSA), a person who has access to ‘official secrets’ is also guilty of an Offence which carries a mandatory minimum one-year jail sentence? What happens if I respond to his invitation to go to his office to see the Cabinet paper he mentioned, it is not he who would be charged under the OSA, but I myself who would be arrested and charged under the OSA? Is this a trap by Lee Kim Sai and the MCA leadership to get me disqualified as an MP and Assemblymen, for a person found guilty of an OSA offence and sentenced to a mandatory one-year jail sentence would be disqualified from holding elective office.