Speech by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, at the Sungei Besi DAP Branch dinner to commemorate his 25th year anniversary as elected Member of Parliament held at Wisma Shaw, Kuala Lumpur on Monday, September 12, 1994 at 3 pm.
DAP calls for an elected Kuala Lumpur mayor and City Council to prove that Malaysia can move from ‘Little Liberalisation’ to ‘Big Liberalisation’.
In the next general elections, the DAP has decided that the campaign theme is to call for ‘Big Liberalisation’ to bring forward the DAP’s founding objective in 1966 to create a Malaysian Malaysia of unity, freedom, justice, equality and morality.
In the last few years, the Barisan Nasional Government has been a bit more open and liberal in certain economic and educational fields, which is why we describe them as a ‘Little Liberalisation’.
However, what Malaysians want is not “Little Liberalisation” but “Big Liberalisation” without which the claim by the Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in Chinese audiences that “We Are All One Family” has no meaning or purpose.
A ‘Big Liberalisation’ in Malaysia would mean the full democratisation of the political, education, economic, social, informational, cultural and religious policies in Malaysia so that every Malaysian would enjoy an equal place under the Malaysian sun.
For Kuala Lumpur, it would mean the restoration to the people of Kuala Lumpur the basic democratic right to run their own city government with an elected Kuala Lumpur Datuk Bandaraya and an elected City Council.
DAP therefore calls for an elected Kuala Lumpur city mayor and an elected city council to prove that Malaysia can move from ‘Little Liberalisation’ to ‘Big Liberalisation’.
For twenty years, the appointed Datuk Bandar Kuala Lumpur and the appointed City Council have failed to resolve the basic problems of the capital city.
It is precisely because the Appointed Datuk Bandar and appointed City Council are not directly answerable and responsible to the ratepayers of Kuala Lumpur that there had been so much corruption, abuses of power and breach of trust in the adminis¬tration and governance of Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur.
The time has come therefore to return the power of governing the Kuala Lumpur city to the ratepayers of the Federal capital, and until and unless there are elections for the posts of Mayor of Kuala Lumpur city and Kuala Lumpur city councillors, then Malaysia cannot claim to be fully open and liberal or to have reached the status of ‘Big Liberalisation’.
Will Liong Sik resign as Transport Minister if there is another Kuala Lumpur International Air port disaster or mishap?
We read in yesterday’s press of a Malaysian, R. Santhiraswegaran, 35, a mechanical, engineer, who was one of the 126 passengers and five crew killed when a USAir Boeing 737 crashed near Pittsburg International Airport, Pennsylvania, United States on Thursday.
This must remind all Malaysians about the two ‘near- miss collisions’ of two aircrafts in three weeks on the Kuala Lumpur International Airport – which would have involved casual¬ties twice or thrice the casualties of the US jetliner.
The Transport Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Ling Liong Sik, should explain whether he would resign as Transport Minister if there is another disaster or mishap at the airport.
It would appear that Liong Sik is very proud of being the only Transport Minister with the most number of international airport accidents during his tenure of office, such as;
* five fires at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in two years;
* two multi-million ringgit gold-bar robberies at the airport cargo complex within four months; and
* two ‘near-miss collisions’ between two air-crafts at the runway within three weeks.
The Minister for Tourism, Arts and Culture, Datuk Sabarrudin Cik had admitted that the accident and disaster prone Kuala Lumpur International Airport had been a great blow to his Ministry’s efforts to promote tourism and in particular to the Visit Malaysia Year 1994.
In fact, it is no exaggeration for anyone to say that Liong Sik’s Transport Ministry had, single-handedly destroyed all the tourism promotion efforts mounted by the Ministry of Tourism for the Visit Malaysia Year 1994.