Speech by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, at the Malacca DAP Ceramah on the Johore Bahru ancient temple wall at Meng Seng Charitable Association Hall on Sunday,, 19th January 1992 at 9 p.m.
If DAP had not been around for the past 25 years, Lim Geok Chan would have been very right to ask “What is there left for the Chinese to be sold out”
The MCA National Vice Chairman and International Trade Deputy Minister, Chua Jui Meng, said in a local press today that the DAP had been a total failure and had made no contribution to the Malaysian Chinese for the past 25 years.
MCA leaders like Chua Jui Meng should stop insulting the Malaysian Chinese in suggesting that the Malaysian Chinese could be deceived for 25 years in continuing to give support to the DAP.
If the DAP had been a total failure and had made no contribution to the Malaysian Chinese for the past 25 years, then are all the MCA Ministers prepared to come out of their ‘safe UMNO’ parliamentary constituencies with Malay-voter majorities and contest against DAP leaders in constituencies with Chinese-voter majorities?
The Malaysian Chinese had in fact made a clear judgement as to who is the total failure, as shown by the fact that the MCA could only secure 20 per cent support of the Chinese electorate in the 1990 general elections.
The judgement of the Chinese electorate in the 1990 general elections against the MCA had been proved right against and again in the past 15 months- with the demolition of the Johore Bahru ancient temple wall on December 29 at 3 a.m. as the latest example.
The Johore Bahru Chinse Association leaders had publicly stated that they had given their full trust to the MCA and its ‘politics of consultation’ on the Johore Bahru ancient temple wall issue and they are very disappointed that their trust in the MCA and its ‘politics of consultation’ had been completely misplaced.
There is also a very simple answer to the allegation by Chua Jui Meng that the DAP is a total failure and had made no contribution to the Malaysian Chinese for the past 25 years.
There is no doubt that if the DAP had not been around for the past 25 years, then the Chairman of the federation of Chinese Assembly Halls in Malaysia, Lim Geok Chan, would have been very right when he asked last month:”What is there left for the Chinese to be sold out?”
Chua Jui Meng should come and ask the people of Malacca whether the DAP is a total failure and had made no contribution to the Malaysian Chinese, and I am sure that he would be told that if everything had been left to MCA, and there was no DAP, the oldest and most historic cultural heritage of the
Malaysian Chinese-the 500-year-old Bukit China-would have been demolished already!
When had MCA leaders ever taken a stand on political principles, whether inside Government or outside? MCA leaders are only interested in promoting their political careers, for which they are prepared to climb over the deal bodies of their own colleagues.
Chua Jui Meng is prepared to do anything to curry favours with UMNO leaders to pave the way to replace Lee Kim Sai as the fourth Minister in Government
Chua Jui Meng has provided the latest example of such a MCA leader. I am shocked that in his statement claiming that the DAP had been a total failure, he could defend and justify the action of the Government in differentiating and discriminating between the bumiputera and non-bumiputera ‘hardcore poor’ and attacked the DAP for calling for equal treatment for the ‘hardcore poor’ regardless of whether they are bumiputera or non-bumiputera.
In my speech in Temerloh last Sunday, I had criticised the Finance Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, for discriminating between the bumiputera and non-bumiputera ‘hardcore poor’. Anwar had announced a $500 million revolving fund to enable the ‘hardcore poor Bumiputeras’ to invest in Amanah Saham Bumiputera (ASB) shares, whereby $5,000 interest-free loans would be given to the ‘hardcore poor Bumiputeras’.
I did not object to the government giving financial assistance to the ‘hardcore poor Bumiputeras’. What I objected to was why the Government should create the new division of bumiputera and non-bumiputera among the ‘hardcore poor’. The ‘hardcore poor’ of all races should be treated as one common socio-economic group which should be given equal treatment, and should not be divided into bumiputera hardcore poor’ and non-bumiputera hardcore poor’.
The Barisan Nasinoal should be taking the first step towards the Vision 2020 where there is going to be a Bangsa Malaysia, instead of inventing more and more divisions among Malaysians-as now, between Bumiputera hardcore poor’ and non-Bumiputera hardcore poor.
In the past Chua Jui Meng would have agreed with my call that the $500 million revolving fund to provide $5,000 interest-free loan to the bumiputera hardcore poor should be extended to the non-bumiputera hardcore poor too, although he would never do so publicly but only in private.
This time, however, Chua Jui Mrng had done the unexpected, in openly and publicly opposing my proposal that the $500 million revolving fund to provide $5,000 interest-free loan to the bumiputera hardcore poor should be extended to the non-bumiputera hardcore poor too as well. What is worse, he distorted my call by painting me as anti-Malay and presented himself as a great champion of the Malay race!
To fulfil his Ministerial ambition, Chua Jui Meng is prepared to ‘eat his own words’ at previous MCA functions
I know the reason for this most unusual behavior by Chua Jui Meng. Chua Jui Meng has one obsession at present-to become a full Minister- and he is prepared to do anything to curry the favours of UMNO leaders to pave the way to replace Lee Kim Sai in Cabinet as the fourth MCA Minister in Government.
It is an open secret that Chua Jui Meng is the Deputy Minister who is most impatient that the MCA Deputy President, Datuk Lee Kim Sai, is still in the Cabinet, and wants most to get Kim Sai removed so that he could be promoted to the Cabinet to be the fourth MCA Minister in Government.
In fact, I believe that Chua Jui Meng was actively involved behind-the-scenes in the recent public humiliation of Lee Kim Sai by Selangor MCA ‘small fries’ over the appointment of MCA district councillors.
As part of his campaign to force Kim Sai out of the Cabinet, and to ensure his own promotion, Jui Meng wants to get into the good books of the top UMNO leaders. This is why he had made such a shocking statement giving full MCA support to the Government discriminating against the non-bumiputra hardcore poor in the $500 million ASB revolving fund.
If he wants UMNO leaders to ‘look at him differently’, Chua Jui Meng has clearly succeeded with his latest statement.
To fulfil his Ministerial ambition, Chua Jui Meng is prepared to ‘eat his own words’ at previous MCA functions. For instance, at the 1988 MCA National Political Seminar on “The Chinese Community Towards & Beyond 1990 in Multi-Racial Malaysia”, Chua Jui Meng called for a new post-1990 policy which does not use ethnicity as a criteria to fight poverty.
But today, because he wants to become a Minister, he gives full support to the use of ethnicity as a criteria and division between the poor, and attacks the DAP for wanting the non-bumiputera hardcore poor to get government assistance and proposing what Chua Jui Meng had himself proposed in 1988.
This shows what a person who is Minister-crazy can say or do! Chua Jui Meng is trying to become a Minister even if it means creating great suffering for the non-bumiputera poor.
Although being promoted to full Minister is personally important to him, Chua Jui Meng should know that there are more important things in life than just being a Cabinet Minister. Surely, it is not honourable at all to get into the Cabinet by betraying political principles and becoming the enemy of the non-bumiputera hardcore poor!