Speech by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretay-General and MP for Tanjong, Lim Kit Siang at the Kahang DAP Branch Anniversary dinner held in Kahang, Johore on Thursday, 25th August 1994 at 9 pm
Is the MCA nation-wide donation drive a MCA campaign to raise funds for Chinese Independent Secondary Schools, or a campaign to use the name of the Chinese Independent Secondary Schools to raise funds for MCA?
MCA President, Datuk Dr. Ling Liong Sik owes the Chinese community a full and satisfactory explanation as to whether the MCA nation-wide donation drive is a MCA campaign to raise funds for Chinese Independent Secondary Schools or a campaign to use the name of the Chinese Independent Secondary Schools to raise funds for MCA.
Up to now, for instance, the MCA leadership has failed to satisfactorily explain the MCA Jempol Division donation scandal, where MCA kept 75 per cent of donations collected in the name of Chinese Independent Secondary Schools while handing over 25 per cent of the monies to the Chinese Independent Secondary Schools.
The MCA Jempol Division donation scandal is a good example where the MCA nation-wide donation drive has become a campaign to use the name of the Chinese Independent Secondary Schools to raise funds for MCA, rather than a campaign by MCA to raise funds for the Chinese Independent Secondary Schools.
I am very disappointed that although the MCA had threatened to take legal action against the DAP and myself for exposing the MCA Jempol Division donation scandal, it had not dared to accept my challenge to institute legal proceedings against me within three days.
MCA leaders must know that a MCA legal suit over the MCA Jempol Division donation scandal would provide an excellent opportunity for exposing all other MCA donation scandal, where MCA used the name of Chinese Independent Secondary Schools to ocollect donations for itself!
In the last few days, MCA leaders had been accusing the DAP of trying to sabotage the MCA donation drive to raise funds for Chinese Independent Secondary Schools.
I can assure the MCA leaders that the DAP had not and will not sabotage any MCA campaign to raise funds for Chinese Independent Secondary Schools, procided the MCA does not misuse the campaign and turn it into a campaign to raise funds for itself by making use of the name of Chinese Independent Secondary Schools like the MCA Jempol Division donation scandal.
I can even call on the Chinese community to give every support to the MCA donation drive for Chinese Independent Secondary Schools, subject to two conditions:
*Firstly, the MCA donation drive must not be the MCA Jempol Division style of donation, where MCA keeps 75 per cent of all donations while giving only 25 per cent of the donations to the Chinese Independent Secondary Schools; and
* Secondly, the realization by the MCA Ministers that their primary responsibility in Cabinet is to get government to allocate regular annual funds to Chinese Independent Secondary Schools and not to raise monies from the Chinese community.