KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 27 — The Cabinet should set up a royal commission of inquiry (RCI) into the events surrounding the May 13, 1969 riots to help heal the nation of its worst racial wounds and move on, the DAP’s Lim Kit Siang (picture) said today.

The senior opposition lawmaker had first mooted the call 42 years ago in his parliamentary debut and revisited the idea in a bid to put a lid on the touchy subject that is being stirred up by local film “Tanda Putera”, which premiered last week.

“Instead of spending public funds to allow a movie director the ‘creative licence’ to concoct fictitious events purportedly provoking the May 13, 1969 riots, I call on the Cabinet tomorrow to establish a royal commission of inquiry on the May 13, 1969 racial riots,” the Gelang Patah MP said in a statement.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and his Cabinet usually meet on Wednesdays.

Lim said his proposal for the RCI on May 13, 44 years after it happened, was not to dole out blame or “punish the culprits... but to ascertain the true causes and developments to present the historical truth to present and future generations and to heal the country’s worst racial wounds and remove the spectre of May 13 from being used at every general election since 1969 to blackmail voters from freely exercising their constitutional right to vote or to justify the pursuit of  divisive and unjust policies.”

The DAP adviser has been engaged in a war of words with “Tanda Putera” director Datin Paduka Shuhaimi Baba for the past year since news broke of an “inflammatory” scene of a Chinese man urinating on a flag pole at the Selangor mentri besar’s residence in the historical film.

The offending scene became the focal point of controversy when an administrator posted on Facebook a photograph ostensibly of the scene along with a caption: “Lim Kit Siang telah kencing di bawah tiang bendera Selangor yang terpacak di rumah menteri besar Selangor ketika itu, Harun Idris, (Lim Kit Siang had urinated at the foot of the flagpole bearing the Selangor flag at the then Selangor MB’s Harun Idris’ house).”

Lim had last year threatened to sue over the photograph and the caption which the “Tanda Putera” executive producer alleged was posted by a fan on the film’s Facebook page without the producers’ knowledge.

“Tanda Putera” was produced at a cost of RM4.8 million provided by the National Film Development Corporation (Finas) and the Multimedia Development Corporation (MdeC).

It had originally been scheduled to be released on September 13 last year, before being postponed to November 13 and subsequently put on hold indefinitely.

Since then, it has been shown in private screenings to an assortment of viewers such as a gathering of Felda settlers in February and at an invitation-only event for International Islamic University students a month later.

“Tanda Putera” is now scheduled to open in cinemas this Thursday.