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.