Despite two of the three parties making up Pakatan Rakyat (PR) being multiracial, Lim Kit Siang has admitted that the coalition needs to break an “unhealthy” habit of assigning roles according to race.
The DAP parliamentary leader had agreed in an interview with The Malaysian Insider recently that it was not just the Barisan Nasional (BN) ruling coalition that was guilty of drawing racial lines.
Lim conceded that the practice of putting DAP in charge of ensuring Chinese support and likewise PAS with Malays during election campaigns had to be done away.
“It is unhealthy. We need to break from that,” said the Ipoh Timur MP who turns 70 today.
Top coalition leaders, family and friends crowded the Equatorial Hotel ballroom in Bukit Jambul, Penang, to pay tribute and celebrate Kit Siang’s birthday.
Among those there were PKR de facto chief Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and PAS’s Mohamed Sabu. Guests watched a 43-minute video chronicling Kit Siang’s life and distributed a book on him titled The Right To Differ by Dr Ooi Kee Beng.
Lim said that as a party that operated mainly in urban areas, their support was mainly non-Malay and was not helped by “propaganda pumped by Umno.”
“We see it until today but it was even worse in earlier days, Umno would tell Malays that if they join DAP they would be traitors and even now they continue with that poison,” he said.
Despite what the former DAP chairman called “the structure of Malaysian politics” where race and religion dominated over class issues, he said the party had a responsibility to reach out and demonstrate that “we are not a Chinese party or one based on race but working for the national interest of all races.”
He said that as the party now led the Penang state government, it was an opportunity to change the perception of Malays towards the party “over a period of time to see a lessening of such worries (of being a traitor) and give room for more Malays to join DAP.”
However, he stopped short of stating that DAP will field candidates in Malay majority areas as “we are in a coalition arrangement so it is not easy to put our own Malay candidates to contest in Malay areas.”
Most of DAP’s members and elected representatives are Chinese while PAS, as an Islamic party, is only open to Muslims, the vast majority of whom are Malays.
PAS is currently attempting to reverse a slide in Malay support by organising two large-scale events today where it hopes to convince tens of thousands of Malay attendees that it can offer them a better deal than Umno.
PKR, while a majority Malay party, also caters to Indians and Chinese but usually assigns leaders from the same ethnicity to handle issues of the respective communities.
It also considers the Bumiputeras in Sabah and Sarawak its political constituents as DAP is already well-supported by the Chinese community there.
Lim added that although its main political challenges came from MCA and Gerakan, it was unfair to label DAP a Chinese party as it had a Malay assemblyman elected the first time it contested a general election in 1969 which also saw the party having four Indian MPs, more than MIC.
He said that the attacks on DAP was a “reflection of the phobia in Umno that they may be losing Malay ground and if PR can pierce through, then Umno’s days are numbered.”
“It is a politics of desperation,” Lim said.
However, he said that PR’s greatest asset was that it was trying to bring different races and religions together.
“In fact, if you’re talking about 1 Malaysia, it is PR that is trying to show what it means, even though it is their (BN) slogan, they are the ones that are breaking it,” he said referring to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s slogan of promoting unity and inclusivity.
