By Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Monday, November 23, 1991:
Kit Siang send third letters to Liong Sik proposing an eight-point format for their meeting at the MCA Headquarters tomorrow to ensure that it would be conducted in a civil and orderly manner without turning into a ‘scene’
I have today faxed a third letter to MCA President, Datuk Dr. Ling Liong Sik proposing an eight-point format for their meeting at the MCA Headquarters tomorrow to ensure that it would be conducted in a civil and orderly manner without turning into a ‘scene’.
In my letter today to Liong Sik, the format I suggested for tomorrow meeting between the two of us at MCA Headquarters would be as follow:
As host, MCA President, Datuk Dr. Ling Liong Sik opens the meeting with his explanation as to why the MCA leadership has made the greatest concession in its 42-year party history with the public policy position that there is no constitutional right, basis, status or guarantee for Chinese primary schools
After Liong Sik had spoken, DAP Secretary-General, Lim Kit Siang will explain why it is wrong for the MCA to take such a policy stand and make the greatest concession in its 42-year history, and explaining why the MCA leadership should retract this concession, and sign a MCA-DAP Joint Declaration on the Constitutional right and status of Chinese primary schools and agree to establish a MCA_DAP Joint Council to protect and defend the constitutional right of the Chinese primary schools
.
As the MCA Deputy President, Datuk Lee Kim Sai, had expressed his wish to explain his Bukit Mertajam speech, Kim Sai should be allowed to make his statement after the DAP Secretary-General.
After Kim Sai had spoken, it would be the turn of the DAP to respond to Kim Sai’s statement.
There should be no interruption when a MCA and DAP leader is speaking, who should be heard in silence and courtesy and allowed to complete what he wanted to say.
There should always be an alternation of speakers from each party, with no party being allowed to hold the floor consecutively.
Each party leader is allowed to be accompanied by not more than nine party leaders.
At the end of the meeting, Lim Kit Siang will wind up before the winding-up by Ling Liong Sik.
In proposing this meeting with Liong Sik at the MCA Headquarters, I am not proposing a physical confrontation or showdown but to reason with the MCA leadership and persuade then not to make the greatest concession in MCA history.
For this reason, apart from the party leaders who will be accompanying me officially to the meeting with Liong Sik at the MCA Headquarters, I have told DAP members and supporters from all DAP branches, particularly in the Federal Territory and Selangor, that there is no need for them to be present at the MCA Headquarters tomorrow.
Liong Sik invited to state his ‘problem’ as to why he and the MCA leadership clould not utter a simple one sentence statement affirming the constitutional right, status and guarantee for Chinese primary schools.
In my third letter to Liong Sik, I expressed my amazement and utter disbelief that in the last 12 days of the controversy over the MCA leadership’s greatest concession in its 42-year party history, not a single MCA ‘mainstream’ leader could make one simple statement; that the MCA leadership in the past, at the present and in future will forever be committed to the constitutional right, status and guarantee for Chinese primary schools.
It is not that the MCA leaders are not unaware of the grave damage such a concession would do to the already very poor standing of the MCA in the Chinese society, and this explains for the nation-wide panic of the MCA in the past 12 days.
This is also the reason why for the first time in MCA history as well, the most highly organized propaganda campaign was launched and directed by the MCA Headquarters to distract public attention from their concession with five different propaganda tactics, with MCA Ministers, Deputy Ministers, state and branch leaders, and youth officials all parroting the same line and repeating the same lies and half-truths.
The MCA national leadership seems to believe that by getting all the MCA Ministers, Deputy Ministers, other national, state, branch and MCA youth officials as well as the various a possible, such a lie can become a truth and fact!
The most important question remains however, why the MCA national leadership could not have ended the entire controversy with Liong Sik or one of the MCA ‘mainstream’ leaders making a simple one sentence statement; that the MCA leadership had in the past, at present and will forever be committed to the constitutional right, status and guarantee for Chinese primary schools and that Kim Sai;s Bukit Mertajam speech does not represent the policy stand of the present MCA ‘mainstream’ leadership?
When it is so difficult for Liong Sik and the MCA national leadership just to utter such a simple one sentence statement, it is clear they have considerable ‘problem’.
In my letter today, I invited Liong Sik to make public the ‘problem’ the MCA national leaders face to the extent that they could not publicly make a simple one sentence statement affirming the constitutional right, status and guarantee for Chinese primary schools and had instead to make the greatest concession in the 42-year MCA history as to declare that there is no such constitutional right, status and guarantee for Chinese primary schools.
I am prepared to ask for meeting with Dr. Mahathir at UMNO Headquarters to speck on behalf of MCA leadership if Liong Sik admits that the UMNO leadership is the reason why MCA has made the greatest concession in 42 years.
I also asked in my third letter to Liong Sik whether the suggestion by the MCA Deputy Finance Minister, Datuk Loke Yuen Yow, two days ago that I should go to UMNO Headquarters to meet with the UMNO leaders instead of meeting Liong Sik at the MCA Headquarters is an indication of the source of the ‘problem’ of the MCA leaders why the MCA leadership cannot utter the simple one sentence statement affirming the constitutional right, status and guarantee of Chinese primary school.
I told Liong Sik that once he admits that the UMNO leadership is the reason why the present MCA leadership has to make the greatest concession in its 42-year history, I am prepared to ask a meeting with the UMNO President, Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamed the UMNO Headquarters to speak on behalf of the MCA leadership.
In the interest of Malaysia and the Malaysia Chinese, I am prepared to meet UMNO leaders on behalf of the MCA leader, if the MCA leaders cannot and dare not fight their own political battles with UMNO in the Barisan Nasional government.