Speech by DAP Secretary-General and Member of Parliament for Bandar Melaka, Lim Kit Siang, at a DAP Public Rally at Gopeng on Sunday, 26th May 1974 at 9 p.m.
1. DAP proposes the signing of a friendship treaty between Malaysia and the People’s Republic of China during Tun Razak’s six-day visit to China
With the establishment of diplomatic relations between Malaysia and the People’s Republic of China during Tun Razak six-day State Visit to China at the invitation of the Chinese Premier Chou En Lai beginning on Tuesday, an important milestone has been reached in our country’s foreign policy.
To make the establishment of diplomatic relations between Malaysia and the People’s Republic of China more meaningful, the DAP proposes that during Tun Razak’s six-day visit to China, the Malaysian and Chinese leaders should conclude a friendship treaty between Malaysia and the People’s Republic of China to signifying the beginning of friendly relations between the governments and the peoples of the two countries.
The signing of such a Malaysia-Chinese friendship treaty will make Tun Razak’s visit to China even more significant, as the more establishment of diplomatic relations is only a recognition of the realities of power, namely that the respective government represent the countries concerned, and nothing more. There are many countries which have diplomatic relations but which have very unfriendly ties, as for instance between China and Russia.
2. Tun Razak should explore the possibility of establishing a College of Chinese medicine and acupuncture with the help of the Chinese Ministry of Health during his six-day visit to China.
Tun Razak should explore the possibility of establishing in Malaysia a College of Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture with the help of the Chinese Ministry of Health.
There are in Malaysia a sizable number of Chinese physicians and acupuncturists, who perform very useful function in supplementing the medical and health service in the country.
The China is world-renewed for her preventive and curative medicine, of benefit doctors and the science of acupuncture, which have impressed many renewed Western and American surgeons and physicians.
The establishment of such a College of Chinese medicine and acupuncture in Malaysia will not only greatly help the medical and health service in Malaysia, it will be a particular bonus to the poor and low-income people, and especially to the rural people, which suffer from very backward medical and health services.
In fact, whole Malaysia is suffering from epidemics of dengue fever and cholera, China, representing a quarter of mankind, has been able successful to abolish large-scale epidemics from a very effective national system of preventive medicine.
Tan Sri Lee Siok Yew, as Health Minister, would be the country greater good if he goes to China to study their technique of preventive medicine and involvement of the masses, instead of going to England now for a holiday, when every day the death toll of dengue mounts alarmingly.
3. Call to the government to be faithful to the Second Malaysia Plan objective to eliminate poverty regardless of race in the provision of full textbook assistance from next year
The Deputy Prime Minister, Dato Hussein On, said in Kuala Trengganu yesterday that national primary and secondary school pupils whose parents earn less than $500 will be given full textbook assistance from next year. These in National type primary schools, as the Chinese and Tamil schools, and these in English national type secondary schools would receive 50 per cent assistance.
In the Second Malaysia Plan laid before Parliament in July 1971, and again in the Mid-Tern Review of the Second Malaysia Plan presented to Parliament at the end of last year, the government stressed that one of their objectives is to eliminate poverty regardless of race.
I therefore call on the Ministry of Education to be faithful and sincere to this objective of the Second Malaysia Plan to eliminate poverty regardless of race, and give full textbook assistance to the poor, regardless of whether they are from national primary schools, or Chinese or Tamil primary schools, regardless of whether the children are of Malay, Chinese or Indian in origin.
In the light of the Second Malaysia Plan objective, therefore, all students whose parents earn less than $500, regardless of his race, or his type f school, should be given full textbook assistance from next year.
I call on the government, therefore, to reconsider and announce full textbook assistance to the children of poor, regardless of race or type if school.