by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Monday, 2nd March 1992:
All DAP State Committees, DAPSY and Wanita DAP directed to incorporate into the 24-month Party Reform a strategy to extend the DAP’s influence and message to rural areas to ensure that the MCA is not allowed to spread lies about the DAP as in the Jerai by-election.
As a result of the Jerai parliamentary by-election campaign, all DAP State Committees, DAPSY and Wanita DAP are directed to incorporate into the 24-month Party Reform a strategy to extend the DAP’s influence and message to the rural areas.
This is to ensure that the MCA is not allowed to spread lies about the DAP as in the current Jerai parliamentary by-election campaign.
The Jerai parliamentary by-election is a direct fight between the UMNO and PAS, and the DAP is not involved in any manner. The MCA is at full liberty to campaign for the UMNO candidate and to attack PAS. However, the MCA had also made use of the Jerai by-election campaign to attack the DAP, falsely accusing the DAP of colluding with PAS to ‘oppress’ and ‘persecute’ the Chinese in Kelantan.
If the MCA had left the DAP completely alone, the DAP is not concerned about the MCA’s campaign of lies in the Jerai by-election. But the DAP cannot allow the MCA to spread lies about the DAP, in Jerai or anywhere else.
It is understandable why the MCA is so desperate as to want to impress UMNO as to its influence among the Chinese voters in Jerai. The 1986 and the 1990 general elections have established beyond a shadow of doubt that the MCA could not get more than 20 per cent support of the Chinese in the urban areas,, and this is why all the MCA Ministers arid MPs won election in areas where the Chinese voters do not have a clear majority solely because of UMNO’s Malay votes.
The MCA leaders are desperate to prove to UMNO that although the MCA has been completely rejected by the Chinese in the urban areas, the MCA has still got Influence among the Chinese in the rural areas.
The MCA should however do this in a honest arid honourable campaign, and not by telling lies at the DAP’s expense.
Kedah DAP unable to organise ceramahs in Jerai to counter MCA lies against DAP before polling day.
Kedah DAP has not been able to organise ceramahs in Jerai before polling day on Wednesday for the DAP to counter and expose the lies the MCA leaders have been spreading about the DAP.
This is because the police wants the Kedah DAP to give the normal two-week notice for a ceramah as the DAP is not contesting in the Jerai by-election.
The DAP has drawn a lesson from the MCA’s campaign of lies against the DAP in the Jerai by-election.
The MCA leadership has found that its ‘all-out war’ against the DAP has turned into an ‘all-out rout’
after the DAP fact-finding mission to Kelantan at the end of January, and the MCA’s eight allegations
of the ‘oppression’ and ‘persecution’ of the Chinese in Kelantan have become the MCA leadership’s ‘eight big condemnations’ as they could not produce proof for even one of the eight allegations.
As a result, the MCA’s campaign of lies had disintegrated in the urban areas, as the Chinese in the towns have seen through, the lies and falsehoods of the MCA propaganda campaign.
For instance, when the Kedah Menteri Besar, Tan Sri Daman Aroff, spoke in Mandarin to the Chinese voters of Jerai, ‘Sacrifice Small I, Fulfil the Big I’, the urban Chinese know immediately that what,
he meant is ‘Sacrifice MCA (which is the ‘Small I’ in Barisan Nasional) to Fulfil UMNO (which is the ‘Big I’ in BN)’.
However, the MCA-leadership has found that it could still continue with its propaganda campaign of lies against the DAP, as in the Jerai by-election, because of the absence of the DAP presence and influence.
For this reason, the MCA’s Jerai by-election campaign had reminded DAP leaders of the need to extend the DAP’s influence and spread the DAP’s message to the rural areas, so that MCA cannot continue with their propaganda of lies and falsehoods even in the rural areas.
All DAP State Committees, DAPSY and Wanita DAP will be asked to earmark the rural areas where the DAP should begin to extend its influence and message to take pre-emptive measures against the MCA’s campaign of lies, regardless of whether the DAP will be fielding candidates either in the state or parliamentary constituencies concerned.