After repeated attempts and questions as to why I was not prepared to be interviewed by RTM, I said I was not prepared to be “at the beck and call of RTM”, to be interviewed when the RTM believes that my views were useful to be used against other opposition parties, but refusing to give the DAP fair coverage of our views and news otherwise.
I have no doubt that if I had consented to be interviewed by RTM, I would be a “star” on the television networks to be used against the Barisan Alternative on the Indera Kayangan by-election results but I have no intention to serve the RTM purpose.
But this does not mean that I should not continue, as I have been doing, to express my views and concerns about national developments, including the Indera Kayangan by-election, on the conclusions and lessons to be drawn from the by-election and in particular, seeking clarification from the various conflicting and contradictory claims about the voting trends in the by-election.
Yesterday, I was threatened that I should not continue to issue any more statements in the next few days asking questions about the actual voting trends in the Indera Kayangan by-election.
It would appear that if I had issued statements in the past few days asking the MCA or UMNO to clarify its various conflicting and contradictory claims about the voting pattern in the Indera Kayangan by-election, I could do no wrong; but when I sought clarification from the Parti Keadilan Nasional (PKN) leadership on the various conflicting and contradictory claims made by PKN leaders on the trends in the by-election, I was doing something so “heinous” that I should be threatened to stop.
Already, allegations are circulating that I have become a tool of Barisan Nasional - reflecting a very simplistic mindset that if you do not give blind support, you are an enemy. This had been the Barisan Nasional mentality to justify its catalogue of abuses of power for the past few decades - but has this political disease spread to outside the folds of Barisan Nasional?
The attitude that one should only criticise the Barisan Nasional but not the Opposition even when the public interest is involved - as in the proper analysis of the Indera Kayangan by-election result to devise a strategy to neutralise and defuse the Barisan Nasional’s potent 911 terror card and the Taliban card from hijacking the issues of justice, freedom, democracy and good governance in the next general elections - is immature and unacceptable.
The issue of a threat to me is most deplorable. DAP leaders do not make baseless and irresponsible criticisms, and if the arsenal of Internal Security Act, Sedition Act, Printing Presses and Publications Act and a whole host of draconian laws could not stop us from speaking our minds, it is most naïve for anyone to think that DAP leaders can be “threatened” into silence.
DAP is prepared to publicly admit our mistakes if our statements, claims and criticisms are proved to be mistaken, and we do not see why the same cannot apply to others whether in the political or other arenas, whether Barisan Nasional or Barisan Alternative.
Yesterday, I asked the PKN leadership to end the conflicting and contradictory claims by various PKN leaders about the Indera Kayangan by-election result and come out with an official analysis to give Malaysians a clear picture of the voting trends last Saturday. I repeat my call, especially as such conflicting and contradictory claims have not stopped. At a seminar on the by-election in Kuala Lumpur on Monday night, the PKN representative gave an incorrect set of figures about the votes cast for the two candidates in the Pekan Baru Kangar voting area.
The DAP offer to co-operate with PKN to work out the voting trends
in the Indera Kayangan by-election still stands as it is important to get
as true and correct a picture as possible on the voting pattern last Saturday,
to consider how to work out an effective strategy to counter to the two
Barisan Nasional electoral trump-cards, the 911 terror card and the Taliban
card.
Last Friday, on the eve of the Indera Kayangan by-election, I said
that opposition parties should meet and discuss after the by-election
the sea-change in Malaysian politics after 911 and how not to allow the
Barisan Nasional government to camouflage an anti-democracy campaign behind
an anti-terrorism campaign in the run-up to the next general election.
This offer also still stands.
(24/1/2002)