by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, from Parliament House on Saturday, March 14, 1987:
DAP to launch a nation-wide series of public meetings of 588,000 co-operative depositors in the campaign to get the Government to make second pay-out to depositors beginning end of March
The DAP will launch a nation-wide series of public meetings of 588,000 co-operative depositors in the campaign to get the Government to make a second pay-out to depositors. The nation-wide campaign will begin at the end of March.
In the past weeks, many groups of co-operative depositors had approached DAP leaders throughout the country expressing their despair and hardships as a result of the $1.5 billion Co-operative Finance Scandal, as the first pay-out by the various appointed co-operative receivers ranging from 10 to 20 per cent is too insignificant to help them tide over their economic problems.
The Government, and in particular Bank Negara which has been assigned by the Cabinet to deal with the problem of the 24 co-operatives, should see to it that the second pay-out of the depositors’ monies should be made in the shortest possible time- latest by end of April.
The second round of nation-wide co-operative public meetings sponsored by the DAP is to provide the co-operative depositors a focus point to rally round and unite their demands for fair and just government treatment of the $1.5 billion Co-operative Finance Scandal.
I believe MCA and Gerakan leaders, including Ministers, national and state leaders, who have a conscience, will agree that the Government is being most unfair and discriminatory in refusing to provide the same bail-out plan for the co-operatives in the way it had bailed out Bank Rakyat with $150 million and Bank Bumiputra with $2.5 billion.
Recently, the Bank Negara again bailed out United Asian Bank with $135.5 million and Perwira Habib Bank with $200 million.
DAP invites MCA and Gerakan to join it in organising the nation-wide campaign of public meetings to demand immediate second pay-out of depositors’ monies
The DAP National Leadership Summit Meeting at the Cameron Highlands from March 6-8, 1987 discussed the co-operative finance crisis and scandal, and in particular the hardships faced by the 588,000 depositors, and decided that a second national effort must be made to get the government to become aware of the urgent need of the depositors for the second pay-out of their monies.
The DAP is prepared to work with the MCA and Gerakan so that the co-operative depositors could get justice from the Government, and for this reason, I openly invite the MCA and Gerakan to join the DAP in organising and launching the campaign to get the government to make a second pay-out of depositors’ monies through a nation-wide series of public meetings of the depositors.
I am prepared to meet the MCA President, Datuk Dr. Ling Liong Sik and the Gerakan President, Datuk Dr. Lim Keng Yaik anytime in the next few days to discuss this campaign.