by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjong, Lim Kit Siang,in Penang on Saturday, January 28, 1995:
I must apologise to the Gerakan and MCA leaders for spoiling their Chinese New Year because of the DAP’s withdrawal from Gagasan Rakyat
I must apologise to the Gerakan and MCA leaders for spoiling their Chinese New Year because of the DAP’s withdrawal from Gagasan Rakyat.
In the past four years, the Gerakan and the MCA had told a mountain of lies about the DAP, alleging that the DAP had teamed up with PAS and supported PAS’ hukum hunud and Islamisation policies through Semangat 46 and the DAP membership in Gagasan Rakyat.
The greatest lie was concocted by the Gerakan President, Datuk Dr. Lim Keng Yaik, who alleged that the DAP and PAS leaders had a secret Jakarta meeting in April 1990, when the passports of the DAP leaders would show that nobody was in Jakarta during the relevant period.
Two days ago, the MCA President, Datuk Dr. Ling Liong Sik repeated the lie that the DAP was responsible for PAS and Semangat 46 capturing the Kelantan State Government and completely wiping out UMNO and Barisan Nasional in the 1990 general elections.
Either Liong Sik did not know that the Chinese voters in Kelantan constituted less than 5 percent of the electorate in the state and that even if the Chinese voters had voted 100 per cent for UMNO, UMNO would not have won a single seat in the 1990 general elections; or Liong Sik is suggesting that the DAP’s influence among the Malays had exceeded that of the UMNO President, Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamed – to the extent that the DAP could influence the Kelantan Malays without a single DAP leader having to campaign in Kelantan as compared to Mahathir’s repeated futile visits to Kelantan.
The DAP had been consistent in our position on PAS, for the DAP had never co-operated or supported PAS’ hukum hunud or Islamisation policies. However, the mountain of lies churned out in the past few years by the Gerakan and MCA ‘factories of lies’ – which operated on the principle that if a lie is repeated a thousand times, it can be made into a truth – had succeeded in confusing and misleading many members of the public.
The DAP’s withdrawal from Gagasan Rakyat has changed the political scenario and the DAP will definitely perform better in the next general elections, whether in the Tanjung 3 Battle to capture Penang state powers or in the parliamentary elections, than if the DAP had remained inside the Gagasan Rakyat.
This does not mean that the next general elections will be an easy battle for the DAP, as the next general elections will remain the DAP’s most difficult and challenging test in all the seven general elections to be fought by the DAP since 1969.