"DAP leaders must be prepared to come out of their safe seats to fight high-risk constituencies for the sake of the people and party." - Lim Kit Siang (November 20, 1999)
GEORGE TOWN (May 3): When Lim Kit Siang openly shared his feelings to a crowd in Penang last Monday on the heavy task he faces in contesting the Gelang Patah parliamentary seat in Johor, the occasion must have been more than just a fortuitous one.
The DAP supremo admitted to having apprehensions about winning Gelang Patah where Barisan Nasional (BN) has placed its biggest local name - Datuk Abdul Ghani Othman, the Mentri Besar of Johor since 1995 - to surmount Kit Siang's onslaught on the state.
It was uncanny that Kit Siang, 72, should open up about his foreboding to a rally here. It was, after all, in Penang that way back in 1990 he had chosen to contest against another political giant - (Tun) Dr Lim Chong Eu, Penang's chief minister of 21 years - vanquishing him in one of the most dramatic encounters in Malaysian electoral history.
Chong Eu's famous defeat in the Padang Kota state constituency which he had represented for years signalled his abrupt and total exit from politics and government. Despite the stature that he gained for turning Penang into a modern industrial powerhouse, Chong Eu was hardly seen and heard again in public until he passed away in November 2010.
Now, all eyes will be on Gelang Patah come May 5 when millions of Malaysians vote during the 13th General Election. Should Kit Siang again succeed in banishing a chief minister, 67-year old Abdul Ghani may well follow Chong Eu's footsteps and retire from a lengthy career at the pinnacle of government.
However, should Abdul Ghani prevail, Kit Siang's voice would be absent from the august halls of Parliament for only the second time since 1969.
"Until now I don't know if I am safe or not in Gelang Patah," he told the 50,000-strong crowd at the Han Chiang School field - the very ground on which the DAP had held a mammoth rally just before the last general election of March 2008.
Sensing the crowd's almost delirious support for the DAP and the reformation it espouses, Kit Siang commented: "If voters in Gelang Patah are like you I would not be so uncertain, but this is not the case. This is a very risky move because when I won Ipoh Timur it was by more than 21,000 votes in 2008."
One can understand Kit Siang's anxiety from a statistical viewpoint. The BN, through its component the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), won Gelang Patah in 2008 by a margin of about 9,000 votes, and before that in 2004, by a whopping 31,666 majority.
A legacy of electoral roaming
Kit Siang may well have recalled another instance when he ran against a chief minister - and lost. This was in 1995 when he took a risk by challenging Chong Eu's successor Tan Sri Koh Tsu Koon at the latter's state stronghold of Tanjung Bungah.
Kit Siang lost by a margin of some 70%, though he managed a convincing win at parliamentary level, maintaining his hold on the Tanjung seat.
As a matter of record, Kit Siang has in fact moved between seats across the country several times, at both state and parliamentary levels; each not without its share of drama and intrigue.
In the general election of July 1978, he moved from the Kota Melaka parliamentary constituency he had previously held to contest and win the Petaling seat. In April 1982, he returned to Kota Melaka to win it again; but moved from his state stronghold, the Kubu state assembly seat in Malacca, to contest the Bandar Hilir state assembly seat - and lost.
In August 1986, he switched from Kota Melaka to Tanjung in Penang which he won; and in March 2004, he took on and wrested the Ipoh Timur parliamentary seat.
In the midst of this, in November 1999, he lost both his parliamentary and state races, for Bukit Bendera and Kebun Bunga respectively.
Ominously enough, Kit Siang had this to say in November 1999, after deciding to take on local Gerakan big names for the two seats in Penang: "DAP leaders must be prepared to come out of their safe seats to fight high-risk constituencies for the sake of the people and party."
Though he lost, his words then may well have presaged his leap into Gelang Patah in 2013.
The PAS factor and an incomplete tsunami
This time, however, the circumstances are different. Bolstered by a massive popular calling against corruption and abuse of power, the DAP and its Pakatan Rakyat allies, PKR and PAS, seem to now have the best chance to take over the federal government.
In particular, the PAS factor in DAP's electoral foray is certainly a remarkable piece of evolution in Malaysian opposition history. In numerous areas where he campaigns in Gelang Patah, Kit Siang has had the unflinching support of PAS members who are playing a crucial role in canvassing much-needed Malay votes against Abdul Ghani.
This is in glaring contrast to what was seen in the November 1999 general election, when Kit Siang and the DAP incurred their biggest and most painful electoral defeats in decades. The principal reason ascribed for the crash then was the Chinese and Indian distrust for PAS and its Islamic agenda.
Today, huge crowds, including Chinese and Indians, are said to be amassing side-by side with PAS supporters to rally behind Lim and the DAP.
And so Kit Siang remains stoic but focused, insisting that the "unfinished business" of the last general election when the BN was denied a two-thirds majority in Parliament must now be completed by replacing BN altogether. And Johor is among the frontline states of BN, hence Kit Siang's immensely symbolic move to challenge a core seat there.
"The battle of Gelang Patah is not about victory or defeat. That is secondary," he said. "It is not about whether DAP or Pakatan Rakyat can win an additional seat. That is also secondary.
"What is important, what is most challenging about the battle of Gelang Patah is whether Johor, Sabah, Sarawak, the whole of Malaysia, can use this golden opportunity to remove Barisan and Umno, and have a Pakatan Rakyat government in Putrajaya."
If that does happen, Kit Siang will doubtless feel vindicated that this move, above any other in his life, has been worth all the risk it carried.
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