'MCA on equal status with Alam Flora, not Umno'

"If you believe in the political gimmicks of MCA, then pigs can fly up the tree," the DAP candidate Tan Kok Wai for the Cheras parliamentary seat in Kuala Lumpur said as he kept his 1,000-strong ceramah crowd captivated with his sharp oratorical skills and verbal punches at Taman Midah last night.

Punctuating his talk with Chinese classical idioms and sayings, he had the packed crowd listening attentively and actively responding with applause by launching broadsides against the MCA and its candidates with his excellent command of the Cantonese dialect.

Tan also directed his stinging criticisms towards his opponent MCA candidate Goh Sim Ik’s electoral promise to the Cheras electorate that he (Goh) would lobby to build two police beat booths in the constituency.

Exposing the MCA candidate as ‘duping’ Cheras voters, the crowd responded with a thunderous applause even before Tan could finish his arguments.

The DAP candidate (left) claimed that BN’s Goh knew that he need not lobby for the police beat booths as the government already had plans to set up two in the Cheras constituency.

"In fact, the DAP as early as June last year was already aware that the government had plans to increase the number of police bases by more than 100 including at Cheras.

"They would either be located at shoplots or as ‘pondok’ throughout the country," said Tan.

He said he did not know that the MCA Cheras candidate would resort to such ‘insincere tricks’ to dupe the Cheras voters in trying to claim credit he did not deserve so that he could win at the coming elections.

"But heaven has eyes," said Tan quoting a Chinese meaning that there was divine justice against man-made evils.

"We did some checking and discovered that it was unfortunate that the MCA deputy internal security minister Fu Ah Kiow had forgotten to tip off Goh (on the allocation of police bases in Cheras) before the IGP’s announcement on the distribution of new police bases to be set up in shop houses (including for pondok) throughout the country."

Shifting his attack to another MCA candidate Yew Teong Look who is contesting the Wangsa Maju parliamentary seat, the DAP candidate told the crowd that Yew, despite being an advisory council board member, had in June last year failed to object to the Kuala Lumpur City Hall using the Jawi script for road names.

"Yew dared not oppose Bandaraya from doing this as the official justification was to promote the PM’s policy on Islam Hadhari. Why use Jawi when most Malaysians and even the Malay younger generation can’t read the language?

"Remember, at one time, even Utusan Malaysia’s Jawi newspaper was closed down. The road names in fact, should be in three languages, namely Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil.

"DAP has managed to do this in the Cheras areas," Tan said and asked the crowd to go and have a look themselves.

"If the authority removes one road sign board, if they remove two, we will make four, if they take it away, we will make 10," he thundered causing the crowd to go into a frenzy of applause and cheering.

Here, Tan thanked the crowd for giving him the opportunity to serve them for so many terms as their member of parliament - he is seeking his sixth term in Cheras where he was first elected in 1986.

Earlier DAP’s Ying Lee Ha (the Teratai state candidate in the Pandan parliamentary constituency) and Fong Kui Lun (DAP candidate for the Bukit Bintang parliamentary seat) had spoken. Tan took the microphone as the last speaker.

Continuing his campaign speech, Tan accused the MCA party of habitually playing to the gallery to mislead the Chinese community adding they were behaving like the ‘running dogs’ of their political masters.

Using the Chinese vernacular schools issue as an example, Tan referred to Goh’s efforts to build such a school in Cheras.

Tan claimed the DAP had put in more effort including searching for two pieces of land and sending out more than 11,000 postcards while MCA Cheras took ‘the easy way out’ by merely announcing their initiative at a press conference.

He said that he had to locate the land to prevent the education minister from giving a flimsy excuse (to reject the proposal to build new Chinese language primary school) by saying there was no land.

"Even then, MCA Cheras only asked for one Chinese school expressing reservation that by asking more, it would offend the other predominant community," Tan told the crowd before posing them a question: "Answer me whether the British colonial government, Alliance or Barisan Nasional government had built the most Chinese schools."

On the MCA leadership’s claim that they were on equal status with other BN component parties particularly with Umno, Tan mockingly remarked that the MCA can only claim equal status to that of Alam Flora (of the garbage collection and disposal fame) drawing uproarious laughter from those present.

"The Chinese community should wake up. The Indian community has woken up," he added.

"Just take a look at MCA leaders," he continued referring to the sex scandal involving former MCA health minister Chua Soi Lek (photo) and the Port Klang Free Trade Zone debacle linked to MCA deputy president Chan Kong Choy.

"The Barisan Nasional is the culprit for disunity in this country with its discriminative policies and MCA is the culprit for supporting these policies," said Tan to which crowd clapped in agreement.

The crowd also listened attentively to Tan’s many ‘stories’ involving MCA leaders including a recent fund-raising affair involving MCA’s Public Complaints Department.

He questioned why the funds raised were not handed over to former MCA branch leader Liew Kow whose spouse was paralysed. Tan claimed this was because Liew Kow had been accused of ‘being ungrateful’ to MCA in that he had also sought DAP Cheras’ help.

Tan had the crowd amused again when he cited a Chinese idiom, ‘Duping the devil to eat tau fu’ (soya bean curd) and illustrating it by explaining how at a previous general election, the MCA candidate, Tan Chai Ho, had misled voters over the Cheras toll issue.

"Should we punish the MCA by not voting for Barisan?" he asked to which a roar of approval came in answer.

As the crowd dispersed at about 12 midnight, animated chatter overheard seemed to indicate that the Cheras parliamentary seat was still in the firm grasp of the opposition and Tan’s majority should increase.