31st March 1990
Mr.V.K. Chin,
Group Editor-in-Chief,
Star,
Sir,
I refer to today’s Star which carried my response to your column of 29th March, as well as your “Reply by V.K.Chin” on the MCA Headquarters meeting between MCA president, Datuk Dr.Ling Liong Sik, and myself last Tuesday.
Firstly, I note that my reply had been terribly slashed and sanitized, in your ‘Reply’ you hoped that the DAP does not think it alone may criticise but may not be criticised.
The DAP welcomes criticism at all times, provided these criticism are sincere, honest and based on facts, and not like your column, malicious, biased, dishonest and built on lies.
If you want to play the MCA partisan, then you must be prepared to publish every word of the DAP reply. Otherwise, confess that you are running the Star like a party organ with no adherence to the basic journalistic ethics of fair journalism and respect for facts.
I reserve the right to pursue through other avenues your biased journalism as illustrated by your butchering of my original reply to you.
Now with regard to your Reply to me, and the tendentious editing of my original letter.
You disputed that I had any “concrete proposal” when I went to the MCA Headquarters to meet Liong Sik, dismissing my proposals that the MCA leadership must take a stand to openly support the sale en bloc of the 147.98 million MPHB shares and tat the KSM Receivers should amend its court application so as to entrust and empower the Manager of the KSM-MPHB Investment Fund to sell the 19.7 per cent stake in MPHB en bloc.
In actual fact, the MCA Headquarters meeting created intense political pressures on the MCA leadership because it highlighted the irresponsible and immoral position of the MCA leadership on the KSM-MPHBIF issue.
It showed that the MCA leadership had not only failed the Chinese community which it claims to represent, it had also failed its own membership, as the 50,398 unitholders were all loyal MCA members who used their hard-earned life-savings to protect the interests of the KSM, the MPHB and the MCA for the past ten years.
It showed that the rights and interests of the MCA members had to be championed by the DAP against the MCA leadership!
The bedlam at the MCA Headquarters made everyone wonder why Liong Sik and the MCA leadership were so unreasonable and irresponsible in refusing to come out strongly and unequivocally in support of the sale en bloc of the MPHB shares, instead of individual retail sale on the market at very much lower prices.
As a result, two days later, the top MCA leadership convened an emergency meeting, did a volte-face, and accepted both my proposals which were announced by the MCA Deputy President, Datuk Lee Kim Sai on Thursday.
Apparently, you could not se proposals which the entire MCA leadership and all the other newspapers could see. You must indeed be a rare bird!
You said that the MCA leadership “certainly did not expect –or need- a lecture on the desirability of selling at the highest possible price”. I do not blame you being naïve, but this is precisely what the MCA leadership needed and what I set out to do when I met Liong Sik at the MCA Headquarters. I am glad that my mission has been met with success.
You said my real intention was to embarrass the MCA, and not to help the unitholders. You are both right and wrong. I wanted to embarrass the MCA leaders and I wanted to help the unitholders, for in this peculiar case, only by embarrassing the MCA leaders to abandon its irresponsible and immoral position on the issue, could the 50,398 unitholders be helped!
You said I was “less than ingenious” in claiming that I did not intent to bring up the eight questions. I had not intended to bring up the eight questions although I was prepared to discuss them if this was Liong Sik’s concern. But Liong Sik and his MCA Rambos, like William Chek and Chua Jui Meng, raised the eight questions in order to turn the meeting into a ‘free for all’ shouting match and to break it up.
The point at issue between us here is not about the eight questions, it is about your false allegation that I had “submitted a list of demands aimed at questioning the integrity of the MCA leadership and to confuse the issue” at the MCA Headquarters meeting, leading to its break-up. What was this list of demands that I submitted that you suggested caused the break-up of the meeting, when I made it clear that I had not been the first to raise the eight questions and that I had submitted no “list of demands aimed at questioning the integrity of the MCA leadership and to confuse the issue.”
A rare bird cannot see what other see, and can also see what others cannot see!
You have been caught red-handed, so to say, in telling a lie. Are you prepared to publicly apologise for such a lie in your column?
You edited my reply, rebutting your allegations that the DAP was responsible for the meeting degenerating into a shouting match, by removing my references to the real culprits for turning the meeting into a bedlam, namely the MCA Rambos like William Chek and Chua Jui Meng.
As host of the meeting, Liong Sik and the MCA leadership had ignored the most basic courtesies of civilized behaviour in or-chestrating such a bedlam, with national MCA leaders misbehaving in such unruly, ill-mannered and indisciplined manner, and what is worse, arranging for demonstrators to abuse the ‘guests’ in the inner sanctum of MCA Headquarters itself.
All these are of course of no importance or relevance to you, which speaks volumes as to your journalistic credentials!
Your sincerely,
(Lim Kit Siang)