Speech by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, at a Negri Sembilan DAP State Committee Chinese New Year dinner held at Seremban on Sunday, 23rd February 1992 at 8 p.m.
By Ting Chew Peh’s logic, is he telling the Chinese community that if it is for DAP, it must also support PAS?
The MCA Secretary-General and Minister for Housing, Dr. Ting Chew Peh, told the Chinese community at a grass-roots leadership meeting of Wanita MCA yesterday that if it is against PAS, it must also reject the DAP on the ground that the two are ‘locked in an unholy alliance’.
By Ting Chew Peh’s logic, he is telling the Chinese community that if it is for the DAP, then it must also support PAS?
I hope Ting Chew Peh can give an answer to this question. If he cannot, then he would have realised as to how infantile and puerile are the arguments which are now being made by MCA Ministers and leaders.
At another function yesterday, Dr. Ting lamented that the intellectuals in Malaysia, in particular the intellectuals of the Chinese-language stream, are not keen in taking part in party activities and electoral politics, and the few intellectuals who take active part in politics are more inclined towards Opposition parties and not keen on joing the ruling parties.
Dr. Ting Chew Peh should know the reason why the MCA, for instance, could not attract the intellectuals, for he is himself the best example of what happens to an intellectual who has joined the MCA.
True, Dr. Ting Chew Peh has had a meteoric political rise, going over the heads of the other MCA MPs, leaders and veterans to become a Cabinet Minister within a very sort span of time.
But everybody knows and sees that Dr. Ting had to pay a very heavy intellectual price for such meteoric political rise.
He has for instance to compromise his intellectual integrity and to unashamedly spout twisted logic, contorted arguments and even falsehoods, as in his speech yesterday.
Dr. Ting is one of the MCA Ministers who went up and down the country spreading the propaganda that the Chinese in Kelantan have been ‘persecuted’ and ‘oppressed’ by the PAS-led Kelantan State Government, and he even publicly said that the Chinese in Kelantan cannot drink beer publicly, but ‘can only drink steathily’.
When I invited Dr. Ting and other MCA Ministers at my expense to fly to Kelantan to drink beer publicly, Dr. Ting had nothing to say.
Dr. Ting is the typical case of a MCA Minister and leader who us shouting from the roof-tops that the Chinese in Kelantan are in ‘deep waters and furnace heat’ as a result of the ‘oppression’ and ‘persecution’ of the PAS-led State Government in Kelantan, but who cannot give an instance of such ‘oppression’ and ‘persecution’ when pressed to do so.
Yesterday, Dr. Ting unabashedly retailed falsehoods against the DAP – alleging that the DAP has become the ‘open defender’ of the Islamisation policies against the rights and interests of the Chinese in Kelantan.
Can Dr. Ting give one instance where I had defended and justified the PAD Islamisation policies which infringed the rights and interests of the Chinese in Kelantan? Would Dr. Ting have the intellectual honesty to withdraw his allegation and make a public apology if he could not give one instance to justify his serious allegation? Of course not, because Dr. Ting has long become a stranger to intellectual integrity and honesty!
I do not think there are many intellectuals who are prepared to join the MCA if one of the conditions is that they must learn to acquire the art of doing intellectually-dishonest things without any sense of shame – as telling all the lies and falsehoods that the MCA Ministers and leaders are spreading about the DAP.
Dr. Ting may feel proud that he is the only intellectual who had risen the highest in the MCA party leadership. But this only means that he is the only intellectual so far who is prepared to sacrifice and compromise his intellectual honesty the most!
Dr. Ting has not only lost his intellectual honesty, he has also lost his intellectual courage as well after a few years in politics.
An intellectual would have the courage of his beliefs and assertions, and would not flinch from any open debate or challenge. I would not challenge Dr. Ting to a debate with the DAP on the various false allegations he had made against the DAP for it is obvious that he has now neither intellectual integrity nor courage – and is now fully cast in the mould of the typical MCA Minister.