If Pakatan Harapan can win in Cameron Highlands by-election on Saturday, I will convene a Pakatan Harapan conference of Orang Asli represnetatives in Cameron Highlands to draft a blueprint for Orang Asli to become full citizens of Malaysia.

Although Barisan Nasonal and PAS leaders and propagandists had spread the toxic and vicious falsehoods before the last general election that I was the real political power in Pakatan Harapan and will become the Prime Minister if Pakatan Harapan wins the 14th General Election, events have exposed these lies and falsehoods.

I am not even in the Cabinet and I cannot speak on behalf of the Pakatan Harapan Government.

The Pakatan Harapan Government will not make any promises because we want to set a good example of clean, free and fair elections after M. Manogaran had succeeded in his election petition resulting in the election of MIC National Vice President C. Sivarraajh as MP for Cameron Highlands last May being declared as null and void, causing the by-election on Saturday.

We will not make any promises, but I confess being shocked after various visits to Orang Asli posts and kampongs in Cameron Highlands at the plight of the Orang Asli after six decades, where after sixty years, they are still denied the most basic of infrastructures like proper access roads, clean water supply, electricity, as well as denied the provision of the most elementary of their needs whether in education, health and medical care, housing, economic opportunities and most important of all, the long-standing denial of the traditional land rights of the Orang Asli.

At the meeting of the Parliamentary Caucus on Institutional Reform and Governance next Tuesday, I wlll raise the issue of failure of the Barisan Nasional government to end the poverty, backwardness and neglect of the socio-economic and educational rights and position of the Orang Asli, and most important of all the long-standing deprivation of their traditional land rights after sixty years, and the need for institutional reforms to break the back of such a problem.

Some years ago, Suhakam completed a wide-ranging special report on indigenous people in Malaysia, and made eighteen recommendations including the review of the role and responsibilities of the Department for Orang Asli Affairs JAKOA.

However, the Najib government completely ignored the Suhakam special report on the Indigenous People in Malaysia and not a single one of the Suhakam’s eighteen recommendations had been implemented in the past six years.

I spent last night in Kampong Dayok in Pos Lenjang with the DAP MP for Bentong, Wong Tak. We agreed that there is great economic potential for Cameron Highlands, with the uplands as the national centre for vegetable and flower farming, exporting to the world; while the lowlands at Jelai with great potential to be developed into famous centre of eco-tourism.

(Speech by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang in Orang Asli Kampong Titom, Pos Lenjang, Jelai on Monday 21st January 2019 at 10 am)