He said that they had no confidence in the Terengganu PAS Government despite promises made such as allowing pig farming activity in the state.
Liong Sik did not explain why ten years ago the the MCA had agreed, as a member of the Terengganu Barisan Nasional state government, to impose a ban on pig farming in Terengganu.
The Terengganu UMNO, through their state assemblymen in the Terengganu State Assembly, has made clear its opposition to the lifting of the ban on pig farming by the PAS State Government.
Is the MCA also opposed to the lifting of the ban on pig farming in Terengganu?
Last month, Liong Sik and the MCA leadership expressed grave disquiet at what he called the more liberal policy of PAS by doubting that it could last.
During the recent general election, the MCA had delivered the Chinese votes to the Barisan Nasional and saved UMNO from suffering even greater electoral defeats through its campaign of lies and falsehoods in creating fear among the Malaysian Chinese that a vote for PAS would mean the end of the political, social, cultural, religious and citizenship rights currently enjoyed by the Chinese.
The campaign of lies and falsehoods of the MCA - and that of Gerakan - were so successful that DAP became the biggest loser in the Barisan Alternative in the recent general election, and I myself was defeated for the first time in 30 years from being elected into Parliament.
The voters in Bukit Bendera for instance were told for instance that if I were elected MP for Bukit Bendera, the Chinese would suffer as there would be no pork, no alcohol, no karaoke, no temple, no Chinese schools, beautiful women would have no jobs and there would be the chopping of hands and feet.
In the event, there was a great swing of Chinese votes against the DAP and the Barisan Alternative candidates in the last general election because the Chinese voters succumbed to the Barisan Nasional propaganda of falsehoods that a vote for DAP is a vote for PAS and Islamic State and an end to the political, cultural, religious and citizenship rights of the Chinese in Malaysia.
Let me state from the outset, that if it is true that the DAP indeed stood for an Islamic State, and a system where there is no pork, no alcohol, no karaoke, no temple, no Chinese schools, beautiful women would have no jobs and there would be a chopping of hands and feet, then I and DAP candidates deserved to be defeated in the general election.
But this was never the DAP's stand, and the Chinese voters should have examined the DAP's political record of over three decades to know that the DAP is a party of principle whose leaders have paid great price of personal sacrifices for our political convictions, whether detention under the Internal Security Act or being persecuted and victimized in the courts of law as in the case of DAP National Vice Chairman and former DAP MP for Kota Melaka, Lim Guan Eng and now the DAP Deputy National Chairman, Karpal Singh.
The Chinese in Kelantan and Terengganu know that it is a lie that the Chinese cannot eat pork, drink alcohol, that there is no karaoke, no temple, no Chinese school, beautiful women cannot find work or that there is the chopping of hands and feet in the two states - but the Chinese outside these two states have been misled by the MCA campaign of lies to believe them.
The overwhelming majority of the Chinese outside Kelantan and Terengganu, for instance, did not know that pork are sold openly in Kota Bahru, unlike in the West Coast states under Barisan Nasional where the pork stalls had to be hidden away and segegrated, as if transacting some illegal sale.
The overwhelming majority of the Chinese outside Kelantan and Terengganu do not know that it is the MCA which aided and supported UMNO in Terengganu ten years ago to ban pig farming in the state - and the MCA has never apologized for such an unprincipled stand.
The overwhelming majority of the Chinese outside Kelantan and Terengganu do not know that there is freedom of religion in Kelantan and Terengganu, that the biggest reclining Buddha in South East Asia is in Kelantan, that Christians and Buddhists in Terengganu could not get approval from the UMNO Terengganu State Government to build and renovate places of worship - while one of the first things which the PAS Terengganu Mentri Besar, Hadi Ahmad Awang had promised on forming the state government was to promise to give positive consideration to such applications when they came before him.
The overwhelming majority of the Chinese outside Kelantan and Terengganu do not know that there are Chinese schools, both primary and an independent Chinese secondary school, or that the PAS state government had approved Malay reserved land to enable the Chung Hwa Chinese secondary and primary schools to carry out extensions, something no other UMNO Mentri Besar in other states had ever done.
All these baseless fears created by the MCA propagandists will fall to the ground when all the Chinese outside Kelantan and Terengganu know the truth, but this may take quite some time because the Barisan Nasional progandists have created a haze of lies and falsehoods with its stringent control of the mass media in the country which thicker than the haze created by the Indonesian forest fires.
I think the best way for the Chinese outside Kelantan and Terengganu to pierce this haze of lies and falsehoods about PAS rule in Kelantan and Terengganu is for them to visit these two states to see with their own eyes what is true and what is false, whether the Chinese in Kelantan and Terengganu are an oppressed race in these two states with no right to practise their religion, customs and way of life.
If these baseless fears about PAS and its rule in Kelantan and
Terengganu can be exposed and wiped out by the next general election, then
the eleventh general election in the nation's history can see a paradigm
shift in Malaysian politics where the old politics of race would be replaced
by the new politics of issues focussing on questions like justice, freedom,
democracy and good governance.
What UMNO and MCA worried and feared most is that PAS would represent
and project a political Islam which is synonymous with the
Islam of justice, tolerance and sensitivities in a multi-racial,
multi-cultural, multi-lingual and multi-religious Malaysia.
MCA and Gerakan leaders in particular are disappointed that PAS leaders have not given them more ammunition to prove that the PAS leaders are extremist who do not respect the rights and sensitivities of a multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-religious society.
(10/3/2000)