KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia needs to break away from racial politics, and that is why DAP has over the past few years made efforts to move beyond such a practice, a DAP lawmaker said today.
Bukit Bendera MP Zairil Khir Johari, in response to PKR parliamentarian William Leong, said it would benefit everyone if all political parties had a more balanced demographic representation.
“Leong claimed DAP is a Chinese-based party that is trying to expand to mixed seats and by doing so, it is compromising not only the coalition but also the other parties like PKR and Amanah (Parti Amanah Negara).
“I think his assertions do not make any sense. We all know DAP has been, for a long time, more non-Malay based and that is why we have taken efforts to move beyond that.
“One real proof of this was in the Sarawak election, where we were happy to give up Batu Kitang, which is a Chinese majority seat, in exchange for five Bumiputera-majority hard-to-win seats.”
Zairil also touched briefly on the history of DAP, which began more as a multi-racial party. The first by-election the party had participated in back in 1967 saw it fielding a Malay candidate.
In the general elections that followed, more and more Malay candidates were fielded, but the trend stopped when the Opposition’s strongest component party got into coalition politics.
“Part of the reason why we kept getting more and more boxed into urban and Chinese-based areas was because of electoral strategy where arrangements were made causing us having to give up a lot of seats.
“But we also believe in Pakatan Harapan’s ideal of moving forward, where we need to break away from racial politics. This is why DAP is prepared to take up the responsibility of contesting in areas out of our comfort zone,” he explained.
Leong had, in a statement published on Sunday, claimed that DAP had come out to be the more dominant party in Pakatan Harapan, and by doing so had only benefited itself.
Zairil admitted DAP’s dominance in the Opposition pact, but stated that it was not a matter that the party should apologise for.
“I think it’s extremely wrong for us to apologise for our success. That just doesn’t make sense as DAP’s success is PH’s success and the 2013 General Election was proof of that.
“We won popular votes, we increased our majority in Penang and Selangor, proving that the people want the PH formula. The facts are very clear. When we work together, the formula works.
“The formula doesn’t work now because we’re all fighting against one another and that has to change.”