GEORGE TOWN, Dec 22 — Lim Guan Eng today rejected the proposal by army veteran Mohd Ali Baharom for MCA to leave Barisan Nasional (BN) for the DAP, saying his party would never collaborate with the Chinese party.
Lim, who is DAP secretary-general, said DAP will not work with any party that is only concerned with the welfare of a single ethnic community.
“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 today.
“They don’t have a Malaysian outlook, they don’t have a Malaysian perspective. They have a chauvinistic perspective.
“So don’t equate us with MCA... if he wants to equate MCA with Umno, can, not DAP,” the Penang chief minister added.
When contacted yesterday, Ali Tinju accused the MCA of defending “cheating Chinese” and told the BN component to team up with DAP so it would be easier for critics to attack them.
The former soldier whose Merah 1Malaysia movement claims to champion Malay rights also told MCA that it is sitting on a free chair gifted by Malays, and said if the party does not take care of its race, it was better for them to leave BN to join DAP.
Mohd Ali 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 was in 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 and was remanded for two days this afternoon to assist in investigations.
* This article replaces a previous version that incorrectly reported Lim Guan Eng as saying that DAP should be compared to Umno instead of MCA.
