by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Monday, June 10, 1991:
Is OPP giving separate categories for Ibans, Kadazans and Orang Asli to ensure they get their rightful share for ‘bumiputra development
MIC President, Datuk Samy Vellu, said that the Cabinet has agreed is categories the Indian community as separate from the other on-bumiputras in the Outline Perspective Plan.
The Cabinet should explain whether it has also agreed to categorise the Ibans, Kadazans and Orang Asli as separate and distinct categories to ensure that they get their rightful share for bumiputras development’, and if not why not.
If what Datuk Samy Vellu said is right, then 20 years after the New Economic Policy, Malaysians are even conscious of their ethnic identities and differences rather than less-as was supposed to be the overriding objective of the NEP 1970-1990!
On the eve of the launching of the OPP 1991-2000, Malaysians are even more divided along ethnics lines and less united along Malaysian bases than under the NEP in 1970!
This does not augur well for the vision of the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr.Mahathir Mohamed, for a united and fully developed Malaysia in the year 2,020.
As present, Malaysians are learning about the OPP through ‘dribs and drabs’ from what one Minister or another Minister chooses to let slip in their speeches. This is most unsatisfactory way of letting Malaysians know that what the OPP is all about-especially as Parliament is supposed to debate a motion to approve the OPP on the very first day of its sitting next Monday.
From the cavalier way they are treating the publication of the OPP, and in particular in not ensuring that MPs as well as the public have full ample time to study OPP, the Barisan Nasional government leaders do not take the people’s democratic rights seriously.