Ex-top cop Yuen Yuet Leng confirmed that the May 13, 1969 “urination” incident was totally fictional

I thank former top police officer, Tan Sri Yuen Yuet Leng for his two postings on my blog statement yesterday: “Yuen Yuet Leng is wrong – as the 1969 general election result was a greater blow to the MCP although it was a set back for the Alliance”.

I had expressed my disagreement with a Sun report on Monday headlined “’Communists helped opposition win seats’ in 1969” quoting Yuen as saying that “the communists had helped opposition parties, including the DAP, to win a substantial number of seats in the 1969 election”.

I had said that Yuen’s claim that the communists helped the opposition to win seats in the 1969 general election was news to me, as it run counter to what happened in the run-up to the 1969 general election and studies whether books or articles by scholars of the 1969 general election.

This was because the communists had called for a boycott of the 1969 general election and the Opposition parties which had participated in the 1969 general election were attacked and condemned as “stooges” and “puppets” of the Alliance for going against their call to “shatter the parliamentary path” and to opt for the “mass struggle”.

But the communists failed in their campaign calling on the voters to boycott the 1969 general election, as the voter turnout reached some 72% - though less than the 79% voter turnout in the 1964 and 73% in the 1959 General Election, it was still higher than the 70% voter turnout in the 1986 and 71% voter turnout in the 1999 General Election.

This was why I lamented both in my writings while in detention under the Internal Security Act in 1969 and in my speeches immediately after my release in 1970 that the country had missed a great opportunity to promote the cause of democracy in Malaysia.

For instance, in my speech in Penang on November 22, 1970 on the occasion of my release from detention, I said

  • “the general election of May 10, 1969 was the high-water mark of democracy in Malaysia” which was “crushed ruthlessly by the violence and bloodshed” of May 13, 1969 riots.

  • That while the Alliance party suffered grievous electoral set-backs, the greatest losers of the May 10 general election were those forces which had actively campaigned for a boycott of general election, on the grounds that “democracy in Malaysia was a farce and trickery on the people”.

  • That May 10, 1969 was a declaration by the people of Malaysia that they preferred the democratic process to undemocratic methods of political struggle, that they preferred the road of reason in Parliament and the State Assemblies to the road of force and violence to bring about the social, economic and political changes they desire.

Yueh and I (he in the Special Branch and I in the DAP) may not see eye-to-eye on all that happened 44 years ago as we have very different perspectives about the political scene in 1969, but we do not doubt each other’s integrity and patriotism.

It is therefore most disgusting, distasteful and outrageous that some UMNO/BN propagandist and cybertroopers have jumped on the Sun report on Yuen’s comments to virtually insinuate that I am a communist!

Let Malaysians learn from the tragedies of the past, like the May 13, 1969 racial riots, not to point an accusatory finger such as to pinpoint the culprits as 44 years have elapsed but for the country to learn the truth about the past so as the better to build a united, harmonious, just and prosperous Malaysia for all Malaysians.

Recently, a lot of lies and falsehoods have been told about the May 13, 1969 riots, as accusing me of provoking the riots with anti-Malay slogans in the street processions in Kuala Lumpur after the May 10, 1969 general election when I was never in Kuala Lumpur at all, and the lies about the outrageous “urination” incident.

I asked the former Special Branch deputy director over the phone just now whether he had ever heard about the “urination” incident at the flagpole of the Selangor Mentri Besar’s residence as Yuan was on duty in Kuala Lumpur in the dark days of the May 13, 1969, and in his autobiography, “Nation Before Self”, Yuen had declared: “I was proud to be a policeman on May 13, 1969”.

Yuen not only confirmed that the May 13, 1969 “urination” incident at the Selangor Mentri Besar’s residence was totally fictional, he rightly remarked that if there was any such a person who committed such an outrageous act, he would not have left the Selangor Mentri Besar’s residence alive!

Lim Kit Siang DAP Parliamentary Leader & MP for Gelang Patah