DON'T SELL YOUR SOUL TO THE DEVIL: Chee Khoon's son slams DAP founder for MAY 13 LIES

Tan Kee Kwong, the son of Malaysia's Mr Opposition Tan Chee Khoon, has come out to shoot down the insinuations made by Goh Hock Guan, the first secretary-general of the DAP party, that the Opposition was to blame for the racial riots of May 13, 1969.

"For God's sake, Hock Guan, don't sell your soul to Devil," Kee Kwong, a former leader in Gerakan party which is part of the ruling BN coalition, toldMalaysia Chronicle.

"We all know Umno is trying to incite the sentiments of the Malays to win the coming general election and it is trying to do this by rehashing the May 13 incident. Millions have been poured into (the film) Tanda Puteraand Prime Minister Najib Razak even asked for it to be shown to the Felda settlers first."

Kee Kwong, who is now senior leader in Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim's PKR party, also rubbished Hock Guan's claim that the electoral stalemate in Selangor in 1969 had also contributed to the unrest that had left hundreds dead on the streets of Kuala Lumpur.

Instead he dropped a bombshell, revealing that Hock Guan, a co-founder of the DAP, had coveted the post of the Selangor chief minister.

"Hock Guan was the one who was gila-kuasa (mad for power). He asked my father to get Lim Thuan Siong (then an independent who had won one of the state seats) to join the Opposition because he wanted to be the Selangor Mentri Besar. My father was shocked. He told Hock Guan off. He said, I will not be a party to your wild schemes to burn this country down. And he was proven to be right on May 13," said Kee Kwong.

Chee Khoon, the co-founder of Gerakan which was then in the Opposition, had organized a victory parade on May 12, 1969 for the unprecedented gains chalked by his party and the DAP. He received permission from the police to hold it. On May 13, UMNO organised a retaliatory march, and armed groups of Malay youths gathered at the capital, Kuala Lumpur. The march degenerated into a racial riot, and the violence continued for two days.

Undercurrents at play in the 1969 elections

General elections were held in Malaysia on May 10, 1969, although voting was postponed until between 21 and 27 June in Sabah and Sarawak. It resulted in the return to power, with a reduced majority, of the ruling Alliance Party, comprising Najib's Umno party, the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA), and the Malayan Indian Congress (MIC).

Selangor, the country's richest state, was among the main battlegrounds for the 1969 ballot. Gerakan, which was co-founded by Chee Khoon, was then in the Opposition along with the DAP. The two parties made major gains in an election, where the voter turnout was 73.6%. At the state level, the Opposition alarmed the Alliance party even more. Alliance not only continued to lose to PAS in Kelantan, but also to political infant Gerakan in Penang. No party commanded an absolute majority in two other states - Selangor and Perak.

In Selangor, Gerakan, DAP and a few other Independents were at one point cumulatively tied with the Alliance at 13 seats each side. Lim Thuan Sing eventually joined the MCA, thereby giving the Alliance a wafer-thin majority. Eventually, the Alliance scraped out 14 seats out of the 24 in the Selangor state assembly and 19 out of 40 in Perak.

A key factor that has often been pointed out by researchers is that the attritionof Malay support was much higher than that of the non-Malays. Malay opposition parties’ vote shares in the peninsula increased drastically from about 15% in 1964 to 25% in 1969 while the support for non-Malay opposition parties remained roughly the same at 26% in both elections.

This data gave rise to and bolstered the views of many Malaysians that the May 13 incident was more than just a power grab. Many view believe the bigger aim was to topple the then Umno president and prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman. Indeed, the unrest and killings were restricted to Selangor state, where former Mentri Besar Harun Idris, had incited Umno Youth members to attack Chinese civilians with machetes and rudimentary weapons.

Najib's father Abdul Razak Hussein has since been accused as being the black hand behind the incident along with other Umno hardliners including former premier Mahathir Mohamad, using the gains made by DAP and Gerakan as an excuse to oust Tunku and suspend Parliament until 1972. During that time, Malaysia was governed by the National Operations Council or Mageran.

Chee Khoon, who died in 1996, left Gerakan when Parliament was restored after the other leaders in Gerakan opted to join the Alliance-led government. "He felt the Opposition still had a critical role to play in Malaysia and this was why he left to form Pekemas," said Kee Kwong, who was then pursuing his first year in medical school.

Hock Guan - how will history remember him?

As for Hock Guan, whatever his motives for leaving the DAP for Gerakan in 1974, it is clear he did not leave a good impression on his former comrades in the Opposition. One of the DAP's founding members, Hock Guan had designed its trademark Rocket symbol. Now, at 78, he runs his own architect and town-planning firm, and appears to be prosperous and in good health.

However, political scars may run deeper than they appear to. In a recent interview with Umno-owned daily, the New Straits Times, Hock Guan missed noopportunity to blame his former colleagues such as DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang for past incidents and for failing to make the DAP a multi-racial party, while praising Najib's policies and 'wisdom' at the same time.

According to Hock Guan, the May 13 tragedy could have been avoided if the Opposition had not won so many seats.

"There is a very, very, big connection between the DAP opposition victory and May 13. I wish I had entered fewer DAP candidates in the elections as this may have possibly prevented the riots," he said in the NST interview.

Hock Guan also blamed the electoral stalemate in Selangor, where Opposition and the Alliance had almost the same number of seats each, for contributing to the riots.

"The stalemate meant that a state government could not have been formed in Selangor. It was too much of a victory for the opposition for some people to handle," Hock Guan said.

Cheap shots

DAP is one of the three members of the Pakatan Rakyat opposition led by Anwar Ibrahim. Anwar and PR are rated as having a better than even chance of wresting the federal government from Najib's Umno-BN for Malaysia's first-ever regime change since 1957.

With the 13th general election widely expected to be held within weeks, both coalitions have ramped up the rhetoric and politicking. PR is due to announce its manifesto on Monday, the first time ever that the Opposition has beaten the ruling coalition into doing so.

Across the divide, Umno-BN leaders including former premier Mahathir Mohamad too have gone into overdrive, focusing on raising the heckles and racial fear of the Malays for the Chinese in a bid to rally them to vote for Umno, which has tried to position itself as a champion for the community.

Are you trying to reprise your dad's May 13, Najib Razak?

There is growing speculation that Najib might try to reprise the same crisis as his father had done in 1969 so as to cling to power. However, his arch rival Anwar is confident that despite the Umno's worst efforts, if the Pakatan wins GE13, there will be a smooth transition of power.

Anwar has pointed out that Malaysian society now was very different from in 1960s; information via the Internet meant the people could get access to what was happening on the ground almost instantaneously; and the Malays and Chinese were now much better educated and no longer so easy to bait as in 1969.

"I would agree with Anwar. But Najib and Umno-BN must still answer to the nation for their attempts to create a situation of panic. That is very becoming very obvious with the Tanda Putera movie and instigating people like Hock Guan to come out of retirement to bat for BN," said Kee Kwong.

"It is like they are trying to set the stage for something unpleasant. So I would demand that Najib comes clean and declare to the public his stand. It is his duty as PM to ease the concern of the public and not to use cheap shots like fear to win GE13."

Malaysia Chronicle