by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, in Penang on Monday, June 28, 1993:
Liong Sik should head the MCA task force to regain MCA lost seats in Penang and announce that he is returning to Penang to contest for a Parliamentary seat in the next general elections
MCA President, Datuk Dr. Ling Liong Sik, announced after the MCA General Assembly yesterday that the MCA will set up a special task force to recapture parliamentary and state seats lost to the DAP in Penang in the 1990 General Elections.
Liong Sik should head this MCA task force and announce that as proof of his confidence in this task force, he is returning to Penang to contest for a Parliamentary seat in the next general elections.
Liong Sik should know that he must bear the greatest personal responsibility for the MCA debacle in Penang in the last general elections where the MCA was completely wiped out in the Parliamentary and state general elections.
This was because Liong Sik himself was the first MCA national leader to lose confidence in the MCA in Penang, and this was why in the 1986 general elections, he abandoned the Mata Kuching parliamentary seat himself and fled to the Labis Parliamentary seat in Johore to depend on UMNO’s Malay votes to get into Parliament and the Cabinet.
In fact, this is the first time in Penang MCA history where an incumbent MCA Member of Parliament had to flee to another state because of his total lack of confidence of the MCA in Penang.
Whatever Liong Sik says now about wanting to recapture MCA’s former glory in Penang would be empty and meaningless unless he is prepared to show by deed that he is serious and means business.
There is only one way for him to do this: To declare that he would return to Penang to contest a Parliamentary seat.
If Liong Sik is not prepared to make such a public commitment, then it is irrelevant whether MCA sets up such a task force or not.