“Today, the MCA’s Publicity Bureau Chairman is adamant that Kit Siang had “no qualms selling out the interests of the non-Muslim community.” Did it not occur to him that his own boss had sold out the pride, dignity and self-respect of the Chinese community by assisting an anti-Islamist pull wool over their eyes?”
THE THIRD FORCE
Who is MCA with – Barisan Nasional or the DAP?
That’s the million-dollar question we need to ask the ruling coalition’s component partner, now prodding the DAP with claims that its dictator for life, Lim Kit Siang, is willing to work with PAS to “seize federal and state power.” According to MCA’s Dato’ Chai Kim Sen on Monday, Kit Siang’s endorsement for Amanah’s Dato’ Husam Musa was testimony that the senior Lim had “no qualms selling out the interests of the non-Muslim community.”
“Kit Siang can churn out all sorts of excuses for Husam Musa, that he has transformed, and that the establishment of Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah) aims to safeguard non-Muslim rights,” Chai said.
“But no matter how much DAP repackages and emphasises on Amanah, there is no ideological distinction between PAS and its splinter party Amanah,” he added.
At first glance, it seems that not only is MCA dead against the DAP, leaders from the BN component party are waging a vendetta of sorts against Kit Siang, stopping short only of labelling him anti-Islam. But that’s just the problem – neither Chai nor his president, Dato’ Seri Liow Tiong Lai, have ever come out in support of UMNO by making their stand on the senior Lim’s anti-Islamic slant known.
But echo the senior Lim they did.
On the 27th of May 2016, Liow became the first president in MCA’s 68-year history to issue a caveat against a sitting Prime Minister (READ HERE). In rebuking a Syariah amendment Bill tabled by PAS president Dato’ Seri Abdul Hadi Awang, Liow blackmailed Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak by threatening to resign if the Prime Minister supported the Bill.
“I’m trying to stop it. I’m trying to get all the component parties to stop it. I am urging both sides of the political divide to come together and stop this Bill,’’ he said, adding, “If we cannot do it, we will have to sacrifice. I will resign.”
By doing so, Liow more or less echoed a call by Kit Siang for UMNO to come clean on its ‘pact’ with PAS to bulldoze the Bill through Parliament. Put differently, the MCA president made it clear that his party had no qualms standing alongside Kit Siang while hurling contempt against UMNO, particularly when it concerned the Islamic Syaria. In every other sense, he was firmly with UMNO.
Makes sense?
Did it not occur to Liow that he sought patronage from the very Kit Siang, who, back in the eighties, depicted Dr Mahathir Mohamad as a “closet fundamentalist whose sole mission was to Islamise Malaysia?” Was Liow not aware that the senior Lim undertook in a cloak-and-dagger styled crusade to turn the Chinese against Mahathir, and ultimately, Islam (READ HERE)?
Kit Siang has been against the right of Muslims to embrace the full scope of the Islamic Syaria for decades. Over the years, he made countless attempts to turn the Chinese against the Islamic Syaria, impressing upon them that UMNO was bent on Islamizing every faculty within its span of control. There are several instances in history to help me drive this point through.
One in particular is the Private Member’s Bill Kit Siang introduced to Parliament on the 20th of June 1980. On that day, the senior Lim moved that the Dewan Rakyat grant him leave to introduce the Education (Amendment) Act 1980, providing for the repeal of Clause 21(2) of the Education Act 1961.
The clause reads:
Where at any time the Minister is satisfied that a National-type primary school may suitably be converted into a National primary school, he may direct that the school shall become a National primary school.
The senior Lim insisted that by repealing the clause, the government would prove its sincerity in accepting Chinese and Tamil primary schools as “an integral and eternal part of the national education system.”
However, when his attempts to force the then premier, Tun Hussein Onn, to support his proposals failed, he became persistent and relentless with attacks against the government by invoking Islamophobia. The senior Lim began to imply that the government was playing pucks with the minds of the Chinese and soon-to-be-voters by Islamising education in local Universities.
Then, in a forum held at Universiti Malaya on the 24th of November in 1984, Kit Siang openly accused the Mahathir administration of attempting to Islamise the economy, education, administration and “other spheres of national life.”
“The UMNO in government appears more concerned about competing with PAS which wants an all-out Islamic state, then in holding firm by the constitutional provision of Malaysia as a secular and multi-religious nation,” he said.
Reading between the lines, you will see how he invoked fear among the Chinese with the idea that UMNO was attempting to indoctrinate Islamic values into mainstream policies. Two years on, he repeated some of these claims at Universiti Sains Malaysia, adding that there was a conscious attempt by the government to force Islam upon non-Muslims.
“Recently, there have been a spate of under-aged non-Muslims being forced to convert to Islam, and forcedly taken away from their homes and parents. I do not believe that there is any religious in the world advocates the break-up of the family ties and family unit, for in Eastern society, to family unit is the integral unit of society. Of family unit is destroyed, society is also destroyed.”
No evidence was ever presented to substantiate these claims.
On the 8th of August 2011, his blog hosted an article, an excerpt from which reads as follows:
“I am equally alarmed at the current intellectual fad of “Islamisation” of knowledge, that is, the attempt to put an Islamic imprint on all disciplines, especially the natural sciences. Invariably it means the adulteration of science. Thus we have Islamic “scientists” who have never seen, let alone used, a test tube.”
Through the article, Kit Siang was attempting to trigger the exodus of Malaysian students towards Singapore by funnelling doubt in the minds of the Chinese against local Universities. The senior Lim knew that Singaporean academicians were strictly guarded in their approach by the PAP government and adhered to evangelist themed ideologies that were communally biased.
Kit Siang, in collusion with the late Lee Kuan Yew, hoped that Malaysian youth returning from Singaporean universities would subscribe to evangelist doctrines that refer to the Prophet Muhammad as the anti-Christ. All in all, his mission was to nurture a breed of Chinese who rejected Islam, believing that UMNO was determined to Islamize the nation by amending federal laws.
When Liow chose to unite with DAP politicians against Hadi’s amendment Bill, he did so with his eyes open, failing to consider that the Bill did not imply on or apply to non-Muslims. The fact is, Kit Siang prodded Liow into opposing the Bill simply to send a message to the Chinese, that relations between the MCA and UMNO were just as bad, if not worse, than those between PAS and the DAP.
By doing so, the senior Lim convinced the Chinese that UMNO and PAS conspired to infuse Islamic fundamentalism into Malaysian law, that even the MCA knew about it and had drawn the line. As far as Kit Siang was concerned, Liow was simply a means towards an end, the end being the justification that UMNO was positively anti-Chinese.
Did Liow not see that?
And where was Chai Kim Sen then? Today, the MCA’s Publicity Bureau Chairman is adamant that Kit Siang had “no qualms selling out the interests of the non-Muslim community.” Did it not occur to him that his own boss had sold out the pride, dignity and self-respect of the Chinese community by assisting an anti-Islamist pull wool over their eyes?
The only way Liow or Chai will ever be able to redeem that pride and dignity is if they were to denounce Kit Siang as anti-Islam. Question is, will they ever do that, considering that they are under the mercy of shadowy figures – the likes of Ling Liong Sik – who conspired with Mahathir and lawyer Matthias Chang to sabotage Barisan Nasional in 2008 and 2013?
I highly doubt it.
