Political ‘backstabbing’ drove me out of DAP: Lee Lam Thye biography

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KUALA LUMPUR – It was political “backstabbing” by DAP that had driven Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye to permanently retire from active politics, despite giving his life to the party.

In his recently released biography, Call Lee Lam Thye: Recalling a Lifetime of Service, Lee recalled the events which saw his exit from DAP just months away from the 1990 general election.

In the book, Lee said he was sidelined by the party when then DAP secretary-general Lim Kit Siang had told him that the party would not be fielding him for the Bukit Bintang parliamentary constituency, a seat which he had won with 30,145 votes in the 1986 general election.

Lee also explained that his brand of moderate politics did not sit well with his DAP peers who were more aggressive and often at odds with the ruling government.

“My non-belligerent approach did not go down well and there was criticism against my stance on various issues.


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[UPDATED] Lee Lam Thye fibbing about betrayal from DAP in his memoir: Kit Siang

KUALA LUMPUR – Veteran DAP politician Lim Kit Siang has accused former party colleague Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye of lying about circumstances that led to the latter’s exit from DAP, as revealed in Lee’s latest autobiography. 

The Iskandar Puteri MP denied ever telling Lee that the party’s leadership had decided to field him, the then incumbent MP in Bukit Bintang, in another seat for the 1990 general election, as claimed in the new book. 

“The thought of Lam Thye contesting in any seat apart from Bukit Bintang had never occurred to me before the 1990 general election.

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Lam Thye knew Parliament would be dissolved, went ‘incommunicado’ in 1990: Kit Siang

KUALA LUMPUR – DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang has shot back again at former colleague Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye’s claim of “backstabbing” by the party in 1990 by accusing Lee of doing a disappearing act just before the general election that year.

The 81-year-old Iskandar Puteri MP expressed regret that Lee had held on to his claim that he was controversially told not to contest in the Bukit Bintang parliamentary constituency that year.

In a recently launched biography, Lee, who had then been a successful elected rep there for four terms, was quoted as saying that the plan to remove him from the constituency led him to quit politics.

Lee, now 75, has been a social activist ever since.

“It is regrettable that Lam Thye has maintained his lie that I had asked him to contest elsewhere apart from Bukit Bintang, when this was not the case,” said Lim, now 81, who was DAP’s secretary-general in 1990.

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