DAP crippled after defeat

DAP crippled after defeat

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): Malaysia's largest opposition party yesterday warned that its ability to monitor government activities had been severely crippled after its devastating defeat in recently-concluded elections.

The Democratic Action Party (DAP), which suffered its worst defeat to Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's National Front, said it would "find it very difficult to check" Mahathir's 14-member ruling coalition.

"The opposition in general and the DAP in particular will find it more difficult and constrained to protect and promote the rights and interests of the people at large," DAP secretary- general Lim Kit Siang said in a statement.

The ethnic-Chinese based DAP made its worst showing in its 29- year history by retaining only nine of its 20 parliamentary seats and 11 of its 45 state assembly seats in Malaysia's ninth general election.

The DAP's dismal score helped give the Front a hefty 162 of the 192 parliamentary seats, or an 84.4-percent majority in parliament.

After the elections, Lim offered to resign from his post for the fourth time since 1980, saying he accepted full responsibility for the party's defeat, but his letter was rejected by the DAP central executive committee (CEC).

Officials said the DAP had formed a National DAP post-mortem committee to locate flaws in the party's campaign strategy and had also brought forward to this year CEC elections due in November 1996.

"In taking full responsibility for the dismal performance, the CEC has decided to call for fresh elections for all party positions so that the members themselves can decide whether they want the status quo to remain," DAP chairman Chen Man Hin said.