Kit Siang’s car tyres punctured outside Parliament (Update)
By LEE YUK PENG | The Star

KUALA LUMPUR: A tyre of the car belonging to veteran Member of Parliament Lim Kit Siang (DAP-Ipoh Timur) parked at the MPs’ parking lot at Parliament building was delibrately punctured with a needle on Wednesday.

Lim, who raised the matter it at the Dewan Rakyat during the Question Time Thursday asked: “How can this act of sabotage happen at Parliament building?”

He said he planned to drive out for lunch at 1:15pm when he discovered that the rear left tyre had deflated.

An aide said he went to a nearby petrol station to inflate the tyre and returned to Parliament building after lunch.

However, he discovered the same tyre had deflated again at 4pm.

The car was then sent to a tyre shop where the needle hole was found near the rim of the tyre and not at the surface.

Lim said he was not going to lodge a police report but Parliament chief administrator Datuk Kamaruddin Baria has spoken to him about it.

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NST | DEWAN DISPATCHES: Lim Kit Siang’s flat tyre: sabotage, vandalism, prank, threat, warning or shoddiness?
By : Azmi Anshar

So irate was his reaction to discovering the needle in the tyre on Wednesday that he raised the matter during Question Time, much to the amusement of the House but Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia is always a hard sell for sob stories.

“My car was sabotaged. I found a needle. In my 40 years of experience, I have never experienced such things,” Kit bellowed in disgust. “How secure is the security in the Parliament?”

Pandikar Amin immediately exuded unsympathetic vibes, shrugging off Kit’s complaint by instructing him to refer the question to the relevant Ministry rather than waste floor time lamenting about his flat tyre. However, Information, Communication and Culture Minister Rais Yatim was genuinely concerned and demonstrated empathy. Although agreeing that Kit’s predicament had nothing to do with the question before the house, Rais volunteered to help Kit by having a word with Parliament security.

“He and I have a long history together. I do not mind going to the security in parliament. That should be sufficient for him,” Rais preambled before delivering his reply.

Dissatisfied, Lim proceeded straight to the Parliament lobby and called for an impromptu Press conference. As usual, a ready audience in the battery of media reporters were waiting eagerly for Kit’s revelation. He had gone for lunch with his DAP colleagues in his Honda CRV and during the drive, they all felt that the car was not cruising as stable as it should be. When they arrived at the restaurant, they found the left rear tyre punctured and quickly brought it to a nearby mechanic to have the problem fixed.

Kit didn’t think much of the flat tyre when he returned to Parliament House after lunch but when he was about to leave at 4pm that day, he was stunned to see the same tyre deflated again. After replacing the flat with a spare, Kit took damaged tyre to the mechanic where this time, a needle mark was discovered. “This is no accident. It was a clear case of sabotage,” he cried. However, Kit elected not to lodge a police report despite the ruthless outcome but had raised it with parliament administrative director Datuk Kamaruddin Baria, who sought out Kit to establish the incident.

Before any elucidation is made to Kit’s catastrophe (a big word considering the action but it is in keeping with Kit’s fondness for hyperboles), let it be stated here that no vehicle owner should ever be burdened with a needle puncture in a tyre, deliberate or otherwise. The hassle it takes to repair the tyre is reason enough for a bout of hyperventilation. That stated, was it sabotage to begin with in its proper definition? Kit might not want to rue other motives as to why someone would persevere to bang a nail into his Honda’s tyre but if he opts to, these are four other possibilities:

:: Vandalism: Vandals have been known to burn cars in certain housing areas out of spite or some measure of warning. House owners, irritated with inconsiderate motorists who haphazardly park their vehicles in front of their gates, have been known to let out air of the tyres. Low-rent tow truck operators have been known to shower highways with nails in the hope of “nailing” an unsuspecting car with a big towing payday.

:: Prank: Some probable suspects who nail the tyre are the scores of MPs who might have an unsettled grudge with Kit over the years but lacks the courage or the intellectual brute to take him on inside the House for a face-off. Khairy Jamaluddin (BN-Rembau) has no such hang-ups when tangoing with Kit head-on in the past year, so he won’t waste time with such delinquent tendencies. But KJ did see the gallows humour to the incident in his day’s Twitter tweet: “Kit Siang claims his CRV tires deliberately punctured in Parliament yest. Nasharuddin PAS missing from Dewan. I think he slashed the tires…” Oh, that’s low.

:: Threat: Politicians are prone to receiving all kinds of threats, from disgruntled rivals who vow to “fix you” in the polls or in a policy decision setting, or discontented supporters who threaten to withdraw their backing if they are not paid in cash or contracts. If Kit had crossed any of such persons, a nail in the tyre is retribution or retaliation of sorts.

:: Warning: Vicious mobsters or even resentful rival politicians are known to deliver bullets in the mail as a deadly warning for Kit to back out of a certain unpopular stance. Kit has taken up many, many politically incorrect stand over the decades, when he riled against corruption, mismanagement, abuse, chicanery and negligence against as many characters as he can spew off his fingertips. Would a nail in a tyre serve as “bullet in the mail?” Karpal Singh is the best man to help Kit answer this disturbing probability.

With these four motives as strong backdrops for the tyre puncture, Kit insisted on defining the flat tyre incident as sabotage. Perhaps he has a point. Sabotage, according to the definition by the Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, is “any underhand interference with production, work, etc., in a plant, factory, etc., as by enemy agents during wartime or by employees during a trade dispute. Or any undermining of a cause.”

Kit wasn’t part with of any production work in a plant or factory but the Dewan Rakyat could be considered as a factory of sorts and House business could be loosely interpreted as production or work. Enemy agents? There’s a long list of people out to get him, starting from the ones within his organisation to the ones trying to shut him up. In keeping up with Kit’s hyperbolic mind, politics is war and its machinations could be deemed as a “trade dispute”

Certainly Kit has a cause, many causes in fact that many detractors would love to undermine. So sabotage could be the original motive.

Or there could be a more plausible one: the mechanic who examined and repaired the flat tyre the first time may have simply done a shoddy job (it happens to mortals like all of us all the time) and the air inside the tyre lasted just about enough for Kit to drive back to Parliament House but not enough to prevent him from stoking up a fuss inside the House and launch into the histrionics that lives up to his reputation.