Pakatan Harapan has a very uphill battle in the Tanjong Piai parliamentary by-election on November 16, 2019.

The MCA is confident that its candidate, Datuk Seri Wee Jeck Seng can win the by-election with a majority of over 5,000 votes.

I call on the Tanjong Piai voters to send out a strong message of long-term support of the Pakatan Harapan objective to build a New Malaysia of unity, excellence and integrity because despite the historic vote of 509 in the 14th General Election 18 months ago for a change of government, it is not easy to undo decades of corruption, injustices, abuses of power and wrongs in a matter of months or years.

Although the MCA is fielding a candidate in Tanjong Piai by-election, the real battle in Tanjong Piai is between the Muafakat Nasional of UMNO and PAS on the one hand and the Pakatan Harapan on the other and the MCA candidate is only an agent of Muafakat Nasional of UMNO and PAS.

Muafakat Nasional, as stated at its ceramah on Wednesday night, wants to make use of Tanjong Piai by-election as the first step for the installation of a Muafakat Nasional government in Putrajaya latest by the 15th General Election.

Does Wee Jeck Seng stand for a united Malaysia where all Malaysians, regardless of race or religion, have their rightful place as provided for in the Malaysian Constitution?

PAS, the dominant partner in Muafakat Nasional, does not accept the Malaysian Constitution, which is the reason for the post-14GE pronouncement by the PAS President that Muslims in Malaysia must vote for Muslim candidates to ensure Muslim rule and the questioning of the appointment of non-Malays and non-Muslims to various national offices.

The lie that the Malays have lost political power and that the Malaysian Government after the 14th General Election was in the hands of the Chinese was repeated at the inaugural Muafakat Nasional ceramah on Wednesday night.

Did the MCA President or MCA candidate condemn such racialism and race-baiting at the Muafakat Nasional ceramah on Wednesday or did they go along with such lies, fake news and hate speech as is their true role?

If the Pakatan Harapan is defeated by Muafakat Nasional in the Tanjong Piai by-election, it would weaken the middle ground and moderate politics in Malaysia as it would be a message that appeals to race and religion, even lies, fake news and hate speech, have a stronger market and make the effort to achieve the Pakatan Harapan objective of a New Malaysia of unity, excellence and integrity even more difficult and insurmountable.

Muafakat Nasional is only interested in destroying the Pakatan Harapan government in Putrajaya, and this is the reason for its lies, fake news and hate speech that the Malays have lost political power.

UMNO failed in its attempt before the 14th General Electionn to scare Malay voters with the lies, fake news and hate speech that DAP was the Malays’ Enemy No. 1 as the Malays would lose political power if Pakatan Harapan came into power.

This was of course a political fallacy, as whatever happened in the 14GE – whether Najib Razak was toppled as Prime Minister or UMNO lost the Federal Government – and proven in the past 18 months, the Malays in Malaysia will continue to exercise political power in the country as there is no way they will lose their political power.

Before the 14th General Election, nobody in UMNO and its propaganda apparatus had been able to answer the question asked by National Laureate Pak Samad as to how Malays could lose political power if UMNO was defeated in a general election.

Pak Samad found it odd that the Malay community was obsessed over the loss of power to the country’s other minority groups if UMNO lost control of Putrajaya, and asked how the Malays and Islam could be under threat.

He asked: how Malays could be under threat and Islam be threatened when those in power have been Malays for over six decades?

Even the UMNO veteran, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah was on public record as saying that he did not know where the perceived threats to Malays were coming from when the government was headed by a Malay, state governments headed by Malays with the exception of Penang, the civil service mostly made up of Malays, the army mostly Malays and there were also the Malay rulers.

Malaysia’s civil rights activist, Zainah Anwar, had also questioned where the “threat to the Malays” came from after nearly 60 years of UMNO rule, and why, after more than four decades of the New Economic Policy, (i) 75.5 per cent of those at the bottom are Malays; (ii) some 90 per cent of the unemployable university graduates Malays; and (iii) of the RM54 billion worth of shares pumped to Malay individuals and institutions between 1984 and 2005, only RM2 billion remained in Malay hands.

The greatest tragedy of Malaysian nation-building is that MCA and MIC leaders are parties to this UMNO (now Muafakat Nasional) race and religious politics while to largely non-Malay crowds, they have take an opposite stand in alleging that the DAP had sold out the rights of the Chinese and Indians in Malaysia to the Malay power-brokers.

Does Mauafat Nasional (including the hanger-on MCA) wants to compete with Pakatan Harapan for Malaysia to become a top world-class nation of unity, justice, freedom, excellence and integrity?

Not all at all.

Forty years ago, when Malaysian Chinese visited China, it was from a rich country to a poor and backward nation. Today, the reverse is taking place – as a visit from Malaysia to China now is to a more developed, advanced and more prosperous nation.

Malaysia is even losing out to Vietnam and Cambodia and other ASEAN countries.

We should be focusing on these issues when we talk about Malaysia’s future, but instead, there is a systematic and orchestrated attempt to destabilise the country by the untrammelled spread of lies, false news and hate speech to incite inter-racial and inter-religious polarisastion and to cause the disintegration and collapse of the Pakatan Harapan Government.

Is Muafakat Nasional for a Malaysia of integrity?

Not at all, for what they want to see is for the former Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak to walk out of his many charges as a free man, instead of being sent to Sungai Buloh Prison, and even return as Prime Minister of Malaysia!

This is why Najib has come to Tanjong Piai as BOSSku to give his blessing to Wee Jeck Seng as the candidate, hoping that this will the first step for his return as the Prime Minister of Malaysia.

In fact, Muafakat Nasional and MCA don’t even admit that there is a 1MDB scandal, although Malaysia had paid billions of ringgit to pay off the 1MDB debt, will have pay billions of ringgit in the future towards 1MDB debt interest payments and Jho Low (one of the masterminds of the 1MDB scandal) had surrended US$1 billion in funds to the United States Department of Justice which he and his family had misappropriated from 1MDB.

The MCA candidate said he want to provide “check and balance” in Parliament.

Can he say whether he had spoken up even once in Parliament on the 1MDB scandal in his ten years as Member of Parliament of Tanjong Piai from 2008 – 2018?

(Media Statement by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang in Gelang Patah on Friday, 8th November 2019)