Election Gives Voters Chance to ‘Save Malaysia’: Veteran Opposition Figure

Next week’s Malaysian general election provides voters an opportunity to “free” the country of “corruption, discrimination and injustice,” the leader of a key opposition party told BenarNews in an interview.

Longtime MP Lim Kit Siang heads the Democratic Action Party, which held 36 seats in the recently dissolved parliament. That was the lion’s share or half of the 72 seats controlled by the four-party Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope) bloc.

For the May 9 election, his party has fielded a slate of 47 parliamentary candidates and 105 candidates for state assembly seats. DAP is hoping to help the Pakatan alliance defeat the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, which has ruled Malaysia since independence in 1957.

“We need to save Malaysia,” Lim, 77, told Benar News as he campaigned in the southern city of Johor Bahru.

“I will summarize this in three words: Set Malaysia Free. That is what we ought to do, which is to set Malaysia free so that we will free the country from corruption, discrimination, injustice in this country.”

Lim, who has participated in 12 previous general elections, was referring apparently to the 1MDB financial scandal, which has shadowed Prime Minister Najib Razak for the past three years and led to calls for his resignation.

Lim keeps a blog in which he regularly posts criticism related to the scandal. He referred to 1MDB in at least three blog postings on Tuesday.

In one, Lim called Najib “the most unpopular Prime Minister in Malaysian history,” saying he was responsible for a money-laundering scandal, which had turned “Malaysia into a global kleptocracy and international outcast” overnight.

1MDB had governance issues but “you cannot just accuse somebody of being a thief or anything unless there is evidence,” Najib told Bloomberg news service in a recent interview.

“It’s been cleared, there’s been no wrongdoing,” Najib said. “I stand by it.”

‘I felt hurt’

Last month, DAP and Pakatan’s three other members decided to drop their separate partisan logos and contest the upcoming elections under the banner of the People’s Justice Party (PKR), after Malaysian authorities denied Pakatan its application to be registered for the May 9 polls as a coalition.

PKR, which held 28 seats in the last parliament, is headed by jailed opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.

“I felt hurt by not using our symbol,” Lim told BenarNews, adding that the move was necessary.

“But we have a bigger objective to save the nation. … We need to save Malaysia.”

Senior leaders of DAP, including party co-founder Chen Man Hin, have expressed displeasure over the dropping of the rocket logo, saying loyal supporters might get confused at the polling booths.

Tan Siew Giaw, another DAP leader, echoed Chen’s concerns.

“All the 52 years of hard work ended in a blink of an eye when the symbol became two crescent moons, and red turned into blue,” Tan told the local daily Utusan on April 12, referring to the PKR symbol and colors.

Lim, a member of Malaysia ethnic Chinese minority, was first elected as a member of parliament in 1969 – the year that Sino-Malay race riots broke out in the country – making him one of the country’s most-senior legislators.

“This is the first time I’m standing not on a rocket and, as you know, the decision to not use the rocket is a painful decision,” Lim said, referring to the logo that has been the rallying symbol for DAP for about 48 years.

DAP, a multi-ethnic political party, advocates for social democracy and racial diversity. In previous elections, Lim has been vocal about a system of preferential treatment instituted by Barisan-led governments that favors members of the Malay majority and indigenous people in jobs and schooling.

DAP’s strongholds include the states of Johor, Penang, Perak, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur.

Lim will be defending his parliament seat in Johor, a longtime bailiwick of Barisan and the birthplace of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the anchor party in the ruling bloc.

“Johor used to be a BN ‘fixed-deposit’ state but now it is our aim to win Johor, so that we can march to Putrajaya [the seat of government],” Lim said, using a common term for votes from states that have sided with the ruling coalition in previous elections.

Targeting at least 120 seats

On Tuesday, Lim told the state-run news service Bernama that Pakatan Harapan would need to win 120 out of 222 parliamentary seats in order to oust Barisan Nasional from government. But the Election Commission on Saturday rejected the nomination of six PH candidates, he said.

Pakatan, or PH, is made of the DAP, the Malay-led multiracial PKR, the Malaysian United Indigenous Party (Bersatu), and the faith-based National Trust Party (Amanah). All decided jointly to use PKR’s symbol – two crescent moons forming a circle – as a common banner for the general election.

That decision came after the Registrar of Societies (ROS) turned down an application for registration by Pakatan and temporarily de-registered Bersatu after the party allegedly failed to submit certain required documents. Opposition leader and former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad described the move, made a day before the dissolution of parliament, as “an abuse of power” and an attempt to confuse citizens.

In 1987, when Mahathir was prime minister, Lim and his son, current DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng, were among the 119 people rounded up in a major crackdown described by the government as an effort to prevent more racial rioting in Malaysia. They were arrested under the controversial Internal Security Act (ISA). Lim spent 17 months in detention while his son was jailed for 12 months.