Lim asked if Dr Chua and his party men would be willing to surrender their positions. — file pic
KUALA LUMPUR, April 18 — Lim Kit Siang has asked Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek to heed his own advice after the MCA president suggested that SUPP stay out of the Sarawak state Cabinet as it lacked popular support.
The DAP parliamentary leader asked if Dr Chua and other top MCA leaders were willing to quit their Cabinet posts as the party similarly did not have majority Chinese support.
“Or will Chua Soi Lek, the MCA ministers, deputy ministers and state excos prefer to be like the traditional three monkeys, who have eyes that see not, ears that hear not and mouth that talks not,” Lim said in a statement today.
He added that it was hypocritical for Dr Chua to prescribe one principle for the Sarawak-based SUPP and another for MCA and Gerakan.
Dr Chua said yesterday that SUPP should not accept state Cabinet posts after losing Chinese support as the party would appear more interested in power than helping people.
“Even if its leaders are in the (state) Cabinet, I can foresee that they can’t solve the community’s problems,” he added.
SUPP, which claims to represent Sarawak’s Chinese community, was trounced by DAP during Saturday’s state elections.
The oldest political party in Sarawak only managed to win six of the 19 seats it contested while DAP succeeded in making off with 12 seats, double what it had before.
Even SUPP president and six-term Piasau assemblyman Tan Sri Dr George Chan was not spared when DAP newcomer Ling Sie Kong beat him by a 1,590-vote margin.
The outcome for SUPP mirrors that of MCA in the Election 2008 “political tsunami”, which saw the peninsula Chinese party’s parliamentary representation cut by half, from 31 to 15 seats.
