Call on the MCA members throughout the country to  send a clear message to MCA Ministers and leaders on the 52nd MCA anniversary celebrations that MCA should support the “Save Damansara School” campaign


Media Conference Statement - at the “Save Damansara School” mass signature campaign in Ipoh
by Lim Kit Siang

(Ipoh, Saturday):  Tomorrow, the MCA is celebrating its 52nd anniversary celebrations. In the past 15 months since the 1999 general elections, the MCA leadership had totally lost its sense of direction and misplaced the support which the Chinese voters had given to the Barisan Nasional and MCA in the last elections  to ensure that Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad remained the Prime Minister with two-thirds parliamentary majority.

The MCA leadership had not only reneged on its general election promises, as for instance its pre-election support for the 83-point Suqiu election appeals, but has  gone against the aspirations of the Chinese community and the Malaysian nation, whether on Vision School, SJK © Damansara or on questions of press freedom, independence of the judiciary, police brutality, corruption and cronyism.

The only thing which seemed to interest the MCA President, Datuk Seri Dr. Ling Liong Sik, is how to outmanoeuvre and outsmart  his deputy to ensure that the MCA succession goes according to his wishes rather than the will of the MCA  delegates and members.

The stand and role of the MCA Ministers and national leaders on the Damansara school controversy is a most shameful one, going against not only  the wishes of the Chinese community which the MCA claims to represent, but also the MCA membership on the ground.

The time has come for the ordinary MCA members throughout the country, especially on the 52nd MCA anniversary celebrations, to send a clear message to the MCA Ministers and national leaders that the general MCA membership is dismayed by the role of the MCA Ministers in forcibly closing the original Damansara school, and to demand that the MCA Ministers should change  their stand to support the “Two Win” formula of retaining the original Damansara school as a community school in addition to the building of the new Chinese primary school in Tropicana, Petaling Jaya within eight months - and that MCA branches and members nation-wide should support the “Save Damansara School” campaign.

(24/2/2001)


*Lim Kit Siang - DAP National Chairman