This, MCA spokesman Ti Lian Ker argued, was something Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng should have pointed out in the first place when Umno’s Jahara Hamid raised the matter in the state assembly last week.
In expressing his disappointment with Lim, Ti pointed out that it was common knowledge and an accepted practice that devotees who mounted shrines – found all over Malaysia – did so to offer prayers.
Practising one’s religion, the former assemblyman noted, was a right enshrined in the Federal Constitution.
Article 11 provides that every person has the right to profess and practise his or her religion.
Ti, who is also the party’s religious harmony bureau chairman, then accused Lim of taking the easy way out by claiming the shrine was a heritage building.
“This is shocking and smells of cowardice. If the secretary-general of DAP, who has been vocal when it comes to the rights of minority, fails in his capacity as the Chief Minister of Penang to defend minority rights when challenged by just an Umno assemblyman, then I am calling him a coward,” he said in a statement.
Jahara, who is the Penang Opposition leader, questioned the placement of a Chinese “tokong” (shrine) in the refurbished Armenian Street Park. She had said the sight of the “tokong” might offend people of other faiths or ethnic groups.
Lim, however, defended the structure, saying that the park was “rebuilt” to mirror the older one. The tokong, he pointed out, was part of the old park.