Lim Kit Siang

I never knew it is so easy to trap MCA and Gerakan leaderships into admitting their unholy subservience to UMNO by giving blank cheque agreement to UMNO Kelantan Assemblymen to support PAS hudud implementation in Kelantan State Assemby next month

I never knew it is so easy to trap MCA and Gerakan leaderships into admitting their unholy subservience to UMNO by giving blank cheque agreement to UMNO Kelantan State Assemblymen so support PAS hudud implementation in Kelantan State Assembly next month, although this will be a fundamental deviation from their founding party principles and the commitments of their founding fathers.

But first of all, let me express my amusement at the response of MCA and Gerakan leaders to my pre-Cabinet email Open Letter to the MCA President, Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai and the Gerakan President, Datuk Mah Siew Keong, asking whether they would notify the Cabinet that their resignations from Cabinet would instantly come into effect when the Kelantan UMNO State Assemblymen support PAS hudud legislation in the Kelantan State Assembly next month.

Without any sense of shame or mortification, one MCA national leader asked me to “show some guts” to emulate the late Karpal Singh.

No emulation of the past or present MCA or Gerakan Presidents?

How sad indeed! Even before they are dead, the MCA and Gerakan Presidents have ceased to be “avatars” even to the present generation of MCA and Gerakan leaders, and it has not occurred to any MCA or Gerakan leader to ask anyone to emulate anyone of the past MCA or Gerakan Presidents, whether Liow Tiong Lai, Dr. Chua Soi Lek, Dr.Ling Liong Sik, Tan Koon Swan or Dr. Koh Tsu Koon and Mah Siew Keong!

It is entirely different in DAP, for the late Karpal Singh continues to be the icon and standard for all DAP leaders to benchmark themselves – and the reason why the DAP had been able to stand tall in the Malaysian political arena despite five decades of trials and tribulations, ups and downs, is because DAP leaders are all as one, like Karpal, in our dedication and loyalty to our political principles and commitments.

I had previously offered the MCA and Gerakan Ministers and leaders a free tuition course in their party headquarters if they have difficulty understanding the political and constitutional implications of Kelantan UMO State Assemblymen supporting the PAS hudud implementation in the Kelantan State Assembly next month.

I am prepared now to give MCA and Gerakan Ministers a second free tuition course in their party headquarters on the meaning of constancy and consistency of political purpose and principles, using the past catalogue of MCA and Gerakan Presidents and leaders to illustrate my examples.

Lets now return to the matter at hand.

After Tok Guru Nik Aziz’s death on Thursday, 12th February, 2015 ( two days after Anwar Ibrahim’s five-year jail sentence) we knew that the UMNO’s “UG” (Unity Government) conspirators and strategists thought it a golden opportunity to refurbish and re-launch their devilish UMNO political plot to destabilize, divide and destroy the Pakatan Rakyat by expanding the fissures among the Pakatan Rakyat parties.

The signs were everywhere that the UMNO strategists were again up to no good:

• The two-hour Friday meeting of the Barisan Nasional Supreme Council (which had not met for a very long long time) within 24 hours of the death of Tok Guru Nik Aziz on the night of Thursday, 12th February, where it is suspected Najib broached the “most likely possibility” that UMNO will stay out of the Chempaka by-election necessitated by Nik Aziz’s death while focusing on the Permatang Pauh parliamentary-election because of Anwar Ibrahim’s five-year imprisonment; and

• The sudden upsurge of MCA and Gerakan speeches and statements at all levels after the Barisan Nasional Supreme Council meeting trying to force an issue with the DAP on the proposed Kelantan State Assembly meeting in March on hudud implementation. Clearly MCA and Gerakan leaders and operatives were planning a three-week “publicity war” against the DAP culminating in the expected Kelantan State Assembly on March 18.

It was indeed a deep devilish and complicated UMNO/MCA/Gerakan plot and DAP leaders were cracking their heads as to how to expose and debunk such a plot.

The whole object of this plot was to create dissension in Pakatan Rakyat over the hudud issue and advance the long-standing “UG” (unity government) of UMNO and PAS goal on the one hand, while on the other hand, enable MCA and Gerakan to gain political advantage to gain “breathing space” from their catastrophic 13GE election performance by spreading the falsehood that the DAP is a thoroughly dishonest and unprincipled party which is prepared to sell out its political principles and stands for a “pottage of gold”!

The unholy UMNO-MCA-Gerakan plot had three objectives – firstly, for UMNO to promise and deliver support of UMNO Kelantan State Assemblymen to PAS Kelantan State Government in the Kelantan State Assembly on the implementation of hudud legislation in Kelantan next month; secondly, for MCA and Gerakan to go on the offensive for three weeks and attack the DAPs for “betraying the rights of non-Malays and non-Muslims” in supporting PAS Kelantan State Government in hudud implementation in the Kelantan State Assembly next month.

The third objective is for everybody to overlook the fact that although MCA and Gerakan have no State Assembly representative in Kelantan, for the first time in MCA and Gerakan history, the two parties have given the “green light” for Kelantan UMNO State Assemblymen to support the PAS hudud implementation proposal in Kelantan State Assembly – which past MCA Presidents like Tun Tan Tan Cheng Lock, Tun Tan Siew Sin even Tan Sri Lee San Choon and past Gerakan Presidents like Tun Dr. Lim Chong Eu and Tun Dr. Lim Keng Yaik would never have agreed.

The biggest problem faced by DAP leaders was how to get the MCA and Gerakan leaderships to admit that they have fundamentally deviated from MCA and Gerakan founding principles in giving green light to UMNO State Assemblymen to support hudud legislation in the Kelantan State Assembly next month.

The pre-Cabinet Email Open Letter to Liow and Mah did the trick, for in the MCA and Gerakan response, they did not make an issue of UMNO Kelantan State Assemblymen supporting PAS hudud implementation in the Kelantan State Assembly next month.

With this point clearly established, it is up to Liow and Mah to explain why they have so easily deviated from their party’s founding principles and commitments of their founding fathers on Malaysia forever a secular democratic Malaysia, and agreeing to Kelantan UMNO State Assemblymen supporting PAS hudud implementation in the Kelantan State Assembly next month.