Was I being overdramatic when I said yesterday that “After 54 years, Malaysia is teetering on the edge of another May 13, 1969 riots”?

Was I being overdramatic when I said yesterday that “After 54 years, Malaysia is teetering on the edge of another May 13, 1969 riots”.

Let us think back to the days of May 11, 12 and 13, 1969.

Did anybody expected May 13, 1969 riots to erupt?

It is strange that after more than three decades, I had been accused of causing the May 13, 1969 riots.

If there was any evidence that I had caused the May 13, 1969 riots, I would have expected a front-bencher or at least a back-bencher to make that allegation in Parliament when it was reconvened in February 1971 and I participated in the debate for the amendments of the Constitution as a consequence of the May 13, 1969 riots.

There was none.

The wild and preposterous allegation that I caused the May 13, 1969 riots first surfaced in the 21st century, more than three decades after the event.

Why was this so?

In the debate in Parliament on February 23, 1971 to amend Constitution to entrench four sensitive issues from being questioned even in Parliament, I declared the DAP stand on the four sensitive issues:

1. Sovereignty of Rulers – “We in the DAP do not and have not questioned the sovereignty of Rulers.”
2. Citizenship – “What I want to say on this is that although it is now a crime to question the citizenship of Malaysians, we have a clear instance of a leader calling with immunity for the deprivation of citizenship of a trade union leader for speaking out against the Government. How will the entrenchment of this question in the Malaysian Constitution change matters?”
3. National Language – “The DAP has always unconditionally accepted Malay as the National Language, as a vital factor for unification in a multi-racial society. What the DAP opposes and what the people at large fear is the use of the National Language as an instrument for the eventual annihilation of other languages and cultures in Malaysia. We submit that in Article 152(1), the Malaysian Constitution guarantees the preservation and sustenance of other languages in the country. It means that no linguistic group in this country need fear the decline in use or extinction of its language.”
4. Special Provision for Malays – “The DAP has also been accused of opposing special rights for Malays. We again invite the government to produce a single instance from our speeches and statements to show that we have opposed efforts to raise the economic standards of living of Malays. As democratic socialists, we are dedicated to the abolition of poverty and economic backwardness regardless of race. We want to create a classless community of Malaysians based on fellowship, co-operation and service, where there is no exploitation of man by man, class by class or race by race. We support any measure which will help better the lot of the Malay poor. But we are strongly opposed to the use of Malay special rights to enrich the new Malay rich to make them richer, while the mass of peasantry and poor are exploited as ever.”

I said in February 1971 there were two great tasks in post-May 13 Malaysia, viz:

1. To restore national unity and arrest the racial polarisation in this country by assuring all Malaysians, regardless of their race, that they will have an equal deal in Malaysia, by the removal of all the imbalances in the different fields of Malaysian life which cause alienation and antagonism among the races;
2. Restore the people’s confidence in the Parliamentary democratic process by genuinely operating a meaningful Parliamentary democracy, for without such a process there cannot be a genuine multi-racial Malaysian nation where all will have an equal place under the Malaysian sun.

At the end of my speech, I proposed the setting up of a Commission of Inquiry to learn the lessons of May 13, 1969 riots and the 21 months of National Operations Council (NOC) rule, and point the solutions, to a united, multi-racial, just and equal Malaysia.

I must thank the longest-serving Inspector-General of Police, Tun Hanif Omar, for the declassification of a 1969 Official Secrets Act document — the statement which I made to the police while in police custody at the Kuala Selangor Police Station lock-up under the Internal Security Act after I rejected advice not to return to Malaysia and flew back to Malaysia on 18th May 1969.

I was asked by the police in 1969 what were my political beliefs and I made eight points 54 years ago:

• Malaysia is a multi-racial, multi-lingual, and multi-cultural society and that a viable Malaysian nation can only be formed if all the races and groups in the country are given an equal stake under the Malaysian sun.
• Unless Malaysians of all races have more in common with one another than with their ‘blood brothers’ counterpart in China, India, or Indonesia, Malaysia cannot be said to have become “A Nation of Malaysians”.
• In a multi-racial society like Malaysia, violence and any ideology of force can only lead to the disintegration of the country because it quickly degenerates into racial conflict. I therefore deplore force and violence of all forms.
• In a multi-racial society, if any racial group feels it is backward, either educationally, economically, culturally, linguistically, or politically, then racial antagonism will be created. Every attempt must be made to remove these imbalances between the races and groups.
• Poverty is not a communal problem. It is a socio-economic problem. To regard poverty as a racial problem is to increase racial antagonism in this country.
• I want a clean, honest, efficient, incorruptible, and effective government.
• Only parliamentary democracy can prevent a racial clash. Any other form of government will only lead to racial mistrust.
• Communism is unconducive in a multi-racial society like Malaysia.

I have lived by these eight points in my political life for over half a century and they should be basis for Malaysia to undergo a reset and return to the original nation-building principles of a plural Malaysia our founding fathers have written into the Malaysian Constitution and the Rukun Negara — constitutional monarchy, parliamentary democracy, separation of powers, rule of law, an independent judiciary, Islam as the official religion and freedom of religion for all faiths in the country, Malay as the national language and the sustenance and preservation of other languages; special provision for the Malays and the natives of Sabah and Sarawak to abolish poverty and backwardness, good governance, public integrity with minimum corruption, a clean and honest government, meritocracy, respect for human rights, an end to the various injustices and inequalities in the country, a world-class economic, educational, health and social system, and national unity, understanding, and harmony from our multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-religious, and multi-cultural diversity.

Nobody is asking a Malaysian to cease to be a Malay, Chinese, Indian, Iban or Kadazan or Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Taoist or Sikkhist, but we must be Malaysian first and our ethnic, religious or regional identity second.

If I had known that May 13, 1969 riots were being planned and going to erupt, I would not be having a thank-you procession of the Bandar Melaka parliamentary constituency and a victory public rally at the Bandar Hilir padang on 12th May 1969 and probably not flown to Kota Kinabalu for a public rally to assist the Kota Kinabalu independent parliamentary candidate on 13th May 1969.

But this is to be wise after the event.

In view of the May 13, 1969 riots, all political parties and candidates for the forthcoming six state polls on August 12 should lower the temperature on racial and religious polarisation and stop exploiting the 3R issues.