DAP insiders dismantling the Lim Dynasty – a True Story
The Third Force
Ever since Dato’ Shabudin Yahaya let a skeleton from Lim Guan Eng’s cupboard loose in parliament two weeks ago, the latter’s father has been a nervous wreck. The senior Lim began to flip through the calendar on his door before it hit him like a wall of bricks – his days as the party’s big enchilada were numbered.
Come July, we may be looking at a DAP without Lim Kit Siang and Guan Eng at the helm. And you can imagine the state of shock that sent the senior Lim into – it was worse than death. And even worse, he’s saying things he would otherwise have never have said, pants down or not.
A source with tentacles lodged into the party’s inner coterie revealed to me last Saturday how Lim Kit Siang seemed all contrite and full of excuses for having sought Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak’s leave of absence last year. It was the 8th of December 2015 – the elder Lim summoned to attention a proposal Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin had made just the day before, saying he supported the UMNO Deputy President’s call for the PM to absent himself from office. According to him, it would allow ‘unimpeded’ investigations into state investment firm 1MDB.
Had the script been flipped – say, if the PM had been his son – Kit Siang would probably have drilled some common sense into our heads, reminding us that the probe only concerned 1MDB and not the PM. But then, it is very unlikely that the PM of Malaysia would ever be from DAP. It would be more realistic, however, to run the same script with the head of a smaller government – say, a state government.
Speaking of which, his son, Lim Guan Eng, happens to be the Chief Minister (CM) of Penang. Now what are the odds of that?
He’s a government head, now under investigation by the MACC for counts of corruption – it seems that karma has played a very sick joke on the senior Lim, perhaps to teach him what it takes to be clean, accountable and transparent. And it is just as well that lady luck showed up when his detractors needed her most – while Najib was still under the spotlight.
But I’ll come to that a little later. All we can do now is to feel pity for the otherwise ruthless and scheming DAP patriarch, who just six days ago stupefied Malaysians by declaring that he did not believe Najib was a crook. Did I not tell you that he’s saying things he would probably have never said before? Which begs the question – does he take Malaysians for fools?
Apparently, he does.
His Monday remark was a coded message to the PM that read, “Have mercy on my son, and I promise to let you off the hook.” But he miscalculated – it is not Najib who is doing a number on Guan Eng. Rather, it is an inside job – by DAP members and assemblymen, who have since grown sick of the Lim dynasty and its high-flown, despotic and presumptuous heresies.
Be that as it may, the Monday remark was as contrasting as a DAP newsletter, perhaps more. Kit Siang may also have been attempting to repackage his 2015 mudslinging campaign against Najib to look as if it was a sincere attempt to ‘help the PM clear his name’. But he’s going to get no compassion from the pro-Najib lane.
And here’s why – in an address to the 16th International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) on the 3rd of September just last year, Kit Siang urged some 1,000 delegates from 130 countries to petition the Prime Minister into coming clean on 1MDB. What he said during the conference can be rephrased to mean this:
“You should own up and admit that you’re guilty of having embezzled 1MDB funds.”
So at least runs the logic – the bottom line being, he passed a guilty verdict on the PM. But six days back, he seemed to be sure Najib wasn’t a crook. Did I also not tell you that the senior Lim was in a state of shock? And people in a state of shock tend to get tangled in their own web of deceit.
As a matter of fact, it is the same web that the senior Lim had tried to get Najib tangled in. Early last year, Kit Siang colluded with a group of politicians and government agents to do several numbers on Najib in the court of public opinion. He knew, as did the cabal of saboteurs, that the MACC was in hot pursuit of a conspiracy that did not exist.
And he knew just as well as Muhyiddin that the entire MACC probe into 1MDB was a put-up job by its director, Tan Sri Abu Kassim, who was in cahoots with former Attorney General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail to put a spoke in Najib’s wheel – at the behest of Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad.
While hitting the PM below the belt did not bother him, it did his detractors, who felt that the party administration had swayed from its original struggles to champion a Malaysia for Malaysians. According to them, DAP was far from being in regular order.
“It is gutter politics at its worst,” said a party member, who felt that the ever presumptuous and despotic Lim dynasty is settled on mudslinging and skulduggery rather than working towards a better Malaysia on a meritorious slate. Frankly, I couldn’t have put it any better.
“We’re a Democratic Action Party, and nothing that Kit Siang did (during the Mahathir-Najib spat) was democratic. Nothing!,” said another member.
Now, suffering from a foot-in-mouth disease, party specialists may just have given Kit Siang three months – tops – before they flush him down the very dump he has been longing to bury the Prime Minister in. But first things first – they’re out to prove that his son isn’t quite the Tokong Penangites have painted him out to be.
Revenge? Sabotage?
It’s none of that, according to an insider. A DAP member with links to the inner circles – he had but two words for it – truth and justice. According to him, nobody is aiming to hit anyone below the belt. Rather, they’re working on putting out rock-solid proof, nothing less. “I don’t believe that those who are releasing the evidence are out to sabotage the CM. Most of us are not like Lim (Kit Siang) who tried to bring Najib down on false pretences,” he says.
For some time now, several state assemblypersons and ordinary party members have been accusing the younger Lim of being far too arrogant. They’re not the least bit entertained with his antics and are foaming at the mouth that he’s been hogging the CM’s seat which, according to them, was never his for the taking.
“He’s an avowed dictator,” a party insider said.
“During the Central Committee election (in 2013), both the Lims lost out to Chin Tong and still insist on having Guan Eng as Secretary General. Is it because Guan Eng has something to hide that he and his father don’t want us to know?”
The outburst was in reference to the party’s more-than-controversial Central Executive Committee (CEC) election that was held on the 29th of September 2013, in which Guan Eng finished fifth, ahead of Padang Kota rep Chow Kon Yeow who managed to bag the eighth spot. But for some assemblymen and ordinary party members, it was Kon Yeow who should have been anointed Chief Minister following the 13th General Elections. To Guan Eng, they had this to say:
“Balik Melaka lah!”
And that’s precisely what they had told him on the 28th of November 2015. Back then, a group of 40 odd protesters rallied against him outside the state’s administrative hub to demand for his retirement. Placards included those that read Children of Penang support Chow Kon Yeow as Penang Chief Minister and Lim Guan Eng Balik Melaka. The same protesters turned up the very next day outside a venue where a state DAP delegates’ congress was being held and demanded the same.
“With the bungalow-for-land scam, this guy is as good as gone. And it’s not fabricated evidence like what many have hurled against Najib. This is hard proof!”
They’re angry.
One member took the current scandal the younger Lim was saddled in as a signal for him to quit both as CM and as party Secretary General. And he is right – it is unlikely that the MACC would ever let Guan Eng off the hook. The evidence was glaringly clear and pitted against his favour, and not to mention, there are hints a lot more would soon grow legs and walk out from the drawers he may have them stashed in.
Before I sign off – does anyone yet see the parallels between the alleged bungalow-for-land scam and the Mahathir-Najib spat?
Mahathir wants Najib dislodged as PM simply because the latter had refused to stoop to the former’s demand that his son be exalted to the post of PM by 2021. As a result, Mahathir got several politicians, government agents and media outfits to fabricate evidence against the PM on counts of corruption and fraud.
In the case of Guan Eng, the tables are somewhat turned – his detractors are pissed that his father has him hogging the CM’s seat. As a result, people in the know from within the party are exposing hard evidence to prove that the CM is corrupt and a fraud.
Interesting? I’ll be back with more on the alleged bungalow-for-land scam. Look out for it…
