Lam Thye S Memoirs Will Do Little To Enhance His Stature

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From Terence Netto
After a 32-year wait, former DAP stalwart Lee Lam Thye has published his memoirs, in which he reveals his reasons for quitting the party in a sensational manner just before the eighth general election in October 1990.
His resignation that September, weeks before the elections, made headline news and dismayed opposition supporters who were anticipating a strong performance by opposition candidates.
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Denial of Barisan Nasional’s supermajority was highly anticipated, especially after Umno dissident Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah formed Semangat 46 and made common cause with DAP.
In that context, Lam Thye’s resignation from DAP was seen as a blow just when the opposition was leveraging mounting popular discontent with then Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s authoritarianism into a higher take of seats in Parliament.
In his just launched memoirs, Call Lee Lam Thye: Recalling a Lifetime of Service, the four-term MP attributed his quitting to a party decision to field him in a constituency other than his bailiwick, Bukit Bintang.
He says party bigwigs did not tell him where else they proposed to field him, giving a sinister hue to the move.
Lam Thye reveals that another reason for his resignation was that his moderate and non-confrontational style of politics did not sit easily with the DAP’s preference for high octane issues and megaphone espousal.
The latter style characterised the approach of party stalwarts such as secretary-general Lim Kit Siang and Karpal Singh.
Lam Thye’s style was viewed by his colleagues as more akin to that of a municipal councillor than a national politician concerned with the great questions of the day.
Lam Thye’s memoirs are not going to peel open the scab and expose the wound of what was seen as a betrayal of the DAP just when such treachery would inflict the most damage.
The DAP did not lose Bukit Bintang in 1990; an MCA defector to DAP, Wee Choo Keong, retained the ward, albeit with a reduced majority and repeated the retention in 1995 but afterwards was stripped of the seat on a legal technicality.
Wee left the party soon after, an event that underscored the febrile nature of intra-opposition party politics.
The DAP has moved on to better innings, from the time of what was viewed as Lam Thye’s betrayal, so it’s unlikely that there will be much interest in disputing his narrative of things past.
Lam Thye did not switch to any BN party. Instead, he became a social activist which he still is, a status that has projected him as an establishment man.
Greater honour resides with the DAP’s stayers, the long-distance runners whose endurance has helped bring the party to where it is today, a force to contend with in the interest of a cause more compelling than ever — parliamentary democracy.
As for Lam Thye, his niche in the overall scheme of things, where once it could have been burnished to distinction, has reduced him to what Graham Greene described a character in one of his novels – “pitiable small beer.” - FMT
Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.

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