By Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Friday, November 22, 1991:
I propose that at our meeting next Tuesday, Ling Liong Sik publicly retract the greatest concession of the MCA in its 42-year party history and sign a joint declaration with the DAP affirming the constitutional right, basis and guarantee for the existence of the Chinese primary schools in Malaysia.
The DAP regard the issue of the constitutional right, basis and guarantee for the existence of the Chinese primary schools in Malaysia and my meeting with the MCA President, Datuk Dr. Ling Liong Sik, with great seriousness and importance, and we hope that the MCA leaders would be equally serious in their approach to both these matters.
Even now, I could not imagine how a party which claims to represent the five million Malaysian Chinese could make the greatest concession in its history as to declare that the existence of the Chinese primary schools in Malaysia has no constitutional right, basis and guarantee.
There are some who feel that this issue of the constitutional right, basis and guarantee for the existence of the Chinese primary schools should be dropped and not be pursued further. I cannot disagree more.
If political parties and political leaders are not prepared to stand up clearly and unequivocally to defend and uphold the constitutional right, basis and guarantee of the Chinese primary schools, and to slap down whoever (whether from UMNO, MCA or from other quarter) then nobody will do so.
It will then not be long before Chinese primary schools will face a crisis, because they would have lost their constitutional right, basis and guarantee because of the default of the MCA leaders who are prepared to make such a unprecedented concession, and of other as well who are not prepared to stand up and defend the constitutional status of the Chinese primary schools.
If MCA Ministers and leaders could publicly declare that the existence of Chinese primary schools does not have constitutional right, basis and guarantee, what else would they be conceding inside the Government and Cabinet out of sight, knowledge and survey of the people?
It is my hope that in my meeting with the MCA President at the MCA Headquarters next Tuesday, Ling Liong Sik could publicly retract the greatest concession of the MCA in its 42-year history and sign a joint declaration with the DAP on the constitutional right, basis and guarantee for the existence and development of the Chinese primary schools in Malaysia.
For the interest of mother tongue education, the DAP is prepared to sign such a joint declaration with the MCA. Is the MCA leadership prepared to sign such a joint declaration affirming the constitutional right, basis and guarantee for the existence and development of the Chinese primary schools with the DAP leadership?
The present MCA leadership should realise and admit the great wrong they had committed in making the greatest concession in its 42-year history in taking the policy position that Chinese primary schools have no constitutional right, basis and guarantee.
If the MCA leadership is prepared to sign a joint declaration affirming the constitutional right, basis and guarantee for the existence and development of the Chinese primary schools in Malaysia, it may herald a new era of co-operation between the MCA and the DAP to jointly defend the constitutional right of mother-tongue education in our country.
I have no doubt that the Chinese community and people, whom the MCA claims to represent, looks forward to the signing of such a joint declaration between the MCA and DAP leaders affirming the constitutional right, basis and guarantee of the Chinese primary schools.
Are Liong Sik and the MCA leadership prepared to rise up to the historic occasion next Tuesday to bring into being the MCA-DAP Declaration on the constitutional right, basis and guarantee for Chinese primary schools in Malaysia?