by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, in Penang on Monday, March l, 1993:
Gerakan national and state leaders must be very nervous and shaky about their hold on Penang State Government when my private family dinner in Tanjong Bungah can send them into a great political crisis
Gerakan President, Datuk, Dr. Lim Keng Yaik, has again proved the accuracy of his nickname as ‘the foolish doctor’ when he takes Gerakan fictions as fact.
Ever since last year, the Penang Chief Minister’s office had been inspiring press reports that I had been seen ‘campaigning’ in several areas in Tanjong Bungah state assembly seat and that I would be contesting against Dr. Koh Tsu Koon in the next general elections.
In a press report on 29th November 1992, Dr. Koh Tsu Koon’s political secretary, Goik Hock Lai, even went public and was quoted as saying that the Chief Minister was “aware that Lim had been recently active in Tanjong Bungah”.
I admit that I was in Tanjong Bungah on the previous Sunday on February 21 with my family for family dinner on my birthday.
However, the Gerakan national and state leadership reacted to my private family dinner in Tanjong Bungah as if they were faced with a great political crisis, leading to Keng Yaik’s wild and irrational outburst at the Kebun Bunga Gerakan dinner on Saturday, accusing me of ‘beggar politics’ and sending my ‘Gurkhas’ to Tanjung Bungah.
I do not find Keng Yaik’s wild rantings worthy of any answer, except to comment that the Gerakan national and state leadership must be very nervous and shaky about Gerakan hold on Penang state government when the whole Gerakan leadership can go into a political crisis when I have a family dinner in Tanjong Bungah.
This is understandable for both the Gerakan national and state leaders know that the real power in the Penang State Government is not in the hands of Gerakan but that of UMNO.