'We deny asking for DPM post, not non-Malays' rights to office'

The DAP leadership has denied that it asked for the deputy prime minister post, but it never denounced a non-Malay's right to hold the office, the party's assistant national publicity secretary Teo Nie Ching clarified today.

Teo was responding to MCA publicity chief Chai Kim Sen who claimed that DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang's denial that the party had asked for the DPM post meant that it has abandoned its stand that all Malaysians has a right to sit in the office.

"Chai needs to be sent to logic class so that he can understand what Lim said properly," she said in a statement today.

She stressed that the DAP denied that they asked for the position of DPM, and did not at any time, said that it is denouncing the rights of non-Malays to be appointed to the highest office.

Teo then asked if the MCA and Chai Kim Sen believe that all Malaysians have a right to dream of becoming the prime minister of Malaysia.

"143 years after the end of the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery, United States elected Barack Obama as its president. Can Chai Kim Sen give us a simple reason why our children do not have a right to dream so?

"Does Chai not believe that, if we are truly a Malaysian Malaysia, one day it is possible that we would have a non-Malay PM? The non-Malay PM, does not necessarily be a
Chinese, but can be Indian, Iban, Kadazan or Dayak," she said.

And she argued, the non-Malay PM does not necessarily have to be from DAP, but could be from PKR, Amanah, and even Gerakan, MIC or MCA.

Teo said, that while the DAP did not ever ask for nor discuss the position of deputy prime minister, it is not the DAP that is denying non-Malay aspirations to high office.

"But if it is unimaginable for a non-Malay to become the PM of the country, perhaps Chai should ask himself, and answer this question honestly: who is to be blamed for it?" she asked.

Last Wednesday, Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia chairperson Dr Mahathir Mohamad caused a furore when he mentioned during a dialogue with opposition supporters that the DAP once asked for the DPM post.

He later said that he was mistaken and instead was referring to the MCA which had once asked for the post from the BN.

The matter became the fodder for political brickbats between the ruling party and the opposition, especially between the DAP and its traditional rival for the Chinese vote, MCA.- Mkini