The Segambut MP said this in defence of Kit Siang, who MCA President Liow Tiong Lai claimed had fled from his Ipoh Timur seat in the last general election.
“Fact is, Kit Siang ‘fled’ from the safe Ipoh Timur seat which has 88% Chinese voters to contest in Gelang Patah, a BN stronghold that was never won by the opposition.
“He also defeated Johor Umno’s Goliath, the state’s former Menteri Besar,” said Lip Eng in a statement today.
He was referring to Abdul Ghani Othman, BN’s candidate for the Gelang Patah parliamentary seat at the last general election. Kit Siang won the seat from Abdul Ghani with a majority of 14,762 votes.
Lip Eng said Liow had made a fool of himself by making such a claim, and challenged the MCA President to leave his Bentong seat and contest elsewhere in the next polls.
He said this would also prove MCA was a party that was ready to serve the public without taking into account their residency, or race, he said.
“Is there any BN leader who is brave enough to leave their safe seat in the rural area and contest in the opposition’s stronghold in major cities nationwide?
“(Liow should) Go and contest in any parliamentary seat held by DAP,” he added.
Liow, in a report published on BN’s mouthpiece, BNBBC, had also labelled DAP a private enterprise owned by Kit Siang.
This, Liow said, was because while MCA has had 10 different presidents, Kit Siang remained the DAP chairman.
Lip Eng shot back, pointing out that unlike the Chinese chauvinistic MCA, DAP was a multiracial democratic party.
He also corrected Liow by saying that since DAP’s inception, it had had three chairmen, and five secretaries-general.
“Did Liow lie on purpose, simply to slander DAP?
“And Liow without any shame, forgot to mention that around 10 MCA presidents have resigned either because they were jailed, involved in personal scandals, or just did so out of the blue.”
He demanded Liow apologise to Kit Siang, and accused MCA of being a party with no ideology except to enrich their members without a care for the public, or the county’s interests.
“We can see this through MCA’s silence over three main issues faced by the country at the moment.
“These are: the shrinking value of our currency which has dropped by 40% against the US dollar in the past four years, the massive spending of the nation’s leaders and their family members, as well as the lack of stern action against the massive losses suffered by 1MDB.”