I remember I first came to Sitiawan in Pekan Gurney 58 years ago, on May 19, 1968, to a dinner by 400 people, in pursuit of a Malaysian Dream.
A year later, I was elected MP for Bandar Melaka and detained under the Internal Security Act, not because of the May 13, 1969 riots in Kuala Lumpur as on the fateful night (I was in Kota Kinabalu and I was never in Kuala Lumpur after the 1969 General Elections) but an abuse of power.
In one of my letters to the then DAP National Chairman Dr. Chen Man Hin, from the Muar Detention Camp, I said:
“The primary affiliation of the overwhelming number of Malaysian citizens is still to race, not to the nation. They still not feel and think in racial, rather than in national, terms.
“While nation building and the evolution of a common Malaysian consciousness and identity is a task which cannot be completed in a decade or two, the people have a right to expect tangible result through the years.
“The great indictment history will make against the government is that it has failed in this primary task. Its policies have failed to make more and more Malaysians to think more and more in Malaysian terms, and less and less in terms of race. On the contrary, they have been directly responsible for making more and more Malaysians to think more and more along racial lines, and less and less in Malaysian terms.”
We are now in the 69th year of nationhood, and we are as distant from tne realisation of a Malaysian Dream than when I first came to Sitiawan.
I was in school when we achieved independence in 1957.
That was the highwater mark of the Malaysian Dream, when there was hope that Malays, Chinese and Indians were coming together in a Malaysian Dream.
But there was voices that we remain as Malays, Chinese and Indians, and when Malaysia was formed in 1963, Kadazans and Ibans, rather than as Malaysians.
They were hard times, when the Lion Dance was banned and the Chinese and Tamil schools were to close down.
But we stood firm on our Malaysian Dream struggle, and although we did not achieve the Malaysian Dream, our struggle was not entirely fruitless.
Vision 2020 with its promise of a Bangsa Malaysia was a significant vision where the policy of assimilation was replaced by a policy of integration.
To my mind, Malaysia can only become a great world-class nation if we can realise the Malaysia Dream.
We must think of the future instead of the past.
(Speech by DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang at the installation of DAP Sitiawan own building on Sunday, May 10, 2026 at 5 p.m.)