KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 23 ― DAP leaders rubbished the suggestion by Mohd Ali Baharom that their party and the MCA join forces to fight for Chinese rights, saying this would never happen as theirs is a multi-racial entity.
Labelling Mohd Ali a nuisance, Seputeh MP Teresa Kok told the army veteran better known as “Ali Tinju” that the DAP would not open its doors to MCA.
“Why should we respond to him? Anyway, DAP and MCA won’t merge, MCA won’t join DAP and DAP won’t welcome them,” she told Malay Mail Online via text message.
Another DAP lawmaker, Liew Chin Tong, said the same and explained that this is because the DAP is a Malaysian party and not a race-based entity like the MCA.
He said his party fights for the rights of all Malaysians and not just for the Chinese race.
“We don’t need MCA to join DAP as DAP is not a Chinese party and never aspires to be one. DAP is a Malaysian party for all,” he said via WhatsApp.
He also took a swipe at Ali Tinju turning the Kota Raya cheating incident into a racial matter.
The DAP MP told the former soldier that he was wrong to generalise all Chinese traders as cheats.
“Ali Tinju is trying to racialise the economy to play on fear and hatred. Not all Chinese are traders and not all traders are Chinese and not all traders are cheats,” he said.
DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng also scoffed at the idea of teaming up with the MCA, saying his party would never want to be associated with the Barisan Nasional (BN) component.
“We don’t want MCA because it’s a racist, chauvinist party. They only want to solve problems for the Chinese community, we (DAP) want to solve problems for all Malaysians,” he told reporters at his office in Komtar yesterday.
Ali Tinju previously told ProjekMMO, the sister publication of Malay Mail Online in Bahasa Malaysia, that MCA should leave BN and team up with federal opposition party, DAP and make it easier for critics to attack them.
The self-styled leader of a group calling itself the “red shirts” was responding to calls from MCA leaders to turn a deaf ear to Mohd Ali’s statements that have taken on a racial tone as the latter singled out the Chinese community for dishonesty in business.
Ali Tinju was charged with sedition in July over incendiary remarks he issued in connection with the Low Yat Plaza handphone cheating incident, but charges were later dropped.
He emerged into the spotlight again last week when he organised a protest outside the Kota Raya shopping complex here over another alleged handphone cheating incident.
In his speech during the protest, Ali Tinju broadly accused Chinese Malaysians of being fraudsters and urged Putrajaya to train handphone traders of Chinese descent to prevent them from cheating their customers.
On Sunday, a melee broke out inside the mall when a group of about 20 men stormed a mobile phone outlet to demand refunds over the same cheating incident.
Ali Tinju was arrested yesterday over the allegedly seditious remarks he made during the Kota Raya protest he organised and was remanded for two days this afternoon to assist in investigations.
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