DAP's objective in the next general election must be to win 30 to 35
parliamentary seats to accomplish the DAP's second great national task - to
ensure that Malaysia remain true to the nation's founding principles as a
democratic, secular, multi-religious, tolerant and progressive nation with
Islam as the official religion but Malaysia is not an Islamic state, whether
ala-UMNO or ala-PAS
Speech
- Perak DAP State
Leadership Retreat
by Lim Kit Siang
(Segari,
Monday):
The next general election, whether held before or after the retirement of
Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad in October as the fourth Prime Minister of
Malaysia for over two decades, is not far away.
In strategizing for the next general election, the DAP must address two
questions: firstly, what is the DAP's objective in the next general
election; and secondly, what is the purpose and objective of the DAP. The
latter answer must determine and shape the former answer, and not the other
way round.
Why did the DAP join in the establishment of the Barisan Alternative before
the 1999 general election and why did the DAP decide on September 22, 2001
to end our membership in the Barisan Alternative?
The DAP decided to join in the formation of the Barisan Alternative in 1999
with the noblest of political objectives - to help create a paradigm shift
in Malaysian politics to bring about a new political scenario by crushing
the Barisan Nasional political hegemony and ending its uninterrupted
two-thirds parliamentary majority for over three decades.
If the DAP had contested on our own without being part of the Barisan
Alternative in the 1999 general election, we stood a good chance of winning
20 to 25 parliamentary seats. By joining hands with Parti Keadilan Nasional,
PAS and Parti Rakyat, we could at most win an extra five to ten seats in the
region of 30 to 35 parliamentary constituencies although we also stood the
risk of losing badly if we could not dispel malicious Barisan Nasional
propaganda and lies that the DAP had betrayed our fundamental principle that
Malaysia must forever remain a democratic, secular and multi-religious
nation and not be turned into an Islamic state.
In other words, by joining in the establishment of the Barisan Alternative,
the DAP could either win big or lose big, while on our own, we could have
cruised to a comfortable general election victory in the 1999 general
election.
If the DAP was a selfish political party concerned solely with its own
short-term interests and obsessed only with the winning or losing of seats,
with no vision of a better nation for all Malaysians and future generations,
DAP would have chosen the less perilous course of standing on our own in the
1999 general election.
But the country would have missed the golden political opportunity of
establishing the first multi-ethnic political counter to the Barisan
Nasional juggernaut based on a common manifesto of justice, freedom,
democracy and good governance to destroy the political hegemony of UMNO.
The DAP on its own could not deny the Barisan Nasional its two-thirds
parliamentary majority, neither could PAS nor Parti Keadilan Nasional
singly. But together, this could have been accomplished in the 1999 general
election.
In the crucial battle of the 1999 general election to crush the Barisan
Nasional political hegemony to herald a paradigm shift in Malaysian politics
and unleash long-suppressed democratic yearnings and forces, every
parliamentary seat counted. This was why the strategic decision was taken
for me to move from Tanjong to contest the Bukit Bendera parliamentary seat,
although I lost by 104 votes, thanks among other things to the Gerakan's
"phantom voters".
In the 1999 general election, if the DAP had won another 20 parliamentary
seats, the Barisan Nasional would have lost ts two-thirds parliamentary
majority and a new political era would have started in Malaysia with the end
of its political hegemony although it would still be the government of the
nation, forcing it to be more responsive, responsible, accountable,
transparent and democratic.
On September 22, 2001, DAP left the Barisan Alternative which we helped to
form because it had deviated from the 1999 BA Common Manifesto of "A Just
Malaysia" with PAS taking uncompromising positions on the Islamic State
while DAP's protestations found no meaningful support from either Parti
Keadilan Nasional or Parti Rakyat.
The political scenario in the run-up to the 11th national general election
is completely different from the pre-1999 general election scenario -
particularly after the events of 911 and 929, i.e. the September 11, 2001
terrorist attacks in the United States and the Sept. 29, 2001 declaration by
the Prime Minister that Malaysia is an Islamic state.
DAP's objective in the next general election must be to win 30
to 35 parliamentary seats to accomplish the DAP's second great national task
- to ensure that Malaysia remain true to the nation's founding principles as
a democratic, secular, multi-religious, tolerant and progressive nation with
Islam as the official religion but Malaysia is not an Islamic state, whether
ala-UMNO or ala-PAS.
In the past 36 years, the DAP's first great accomplishment was to halt
attempts to build the Malaysian nation by the policy of assimilation,
insisting that in a multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-cultural and
multi-religious Malaysia, the only sensible policy is by way of integration.
This battle is not completely over but the assimilationists have been forced
to go underground.
The best election result the DAP had achieved in the past was 24
parliamentary seats in the 1986 general election. If with 24 parliamentary
seats, while the Barisan Nasional's political hegemony and two-thirds
parliamentary majority had remained intact, DAP could accomplish our first
great task to halt assimilation and ensure integration in nation-building
policy, there is no reason why the DAP cannot accomplish our second great
task if we can secure 30 to 35 parliamentary seats in the next general
election.
With this parliamentary strength, DAP will also be in a position to make an
important contribution to end the Barisan Nasional political hegemony by
ending its uninterrupted two-thirds majority in Parliament.
It is in this context that the Perak DAP should strategise and plan for the
next general election. If DAP is to succeed in winning 30 to 35
parliamentary seats to accomplish our second great national task, then Perak
together with Penang are the two states which must shoulder the greatest and
most challenging responsibility.
(20/1/2003)
*
Lim Kit Siang, DAP National
Chairman
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http://dapmalaysia.org