JOHOR BARU: DAP veteran Tan Sri Lim Kit Siang has urged Johor voters not to split their votes in the July 11 state polls.
"We must not split our vote. If we split our vote, the Malaysian dream will be under attack, “ he said at a ceramah in Perling here on Monday (July 6) night.
Lim added that the election would show whether the country was "going forward or backwards".
Lim, 85, also took a swipe at a former prime minister whom he did not name.
"Lately, there is a former prime minister who says you are a Malay and you have to vote for a Malay," he said.
“This is not a Malaysian dream,” he added.
Lim said he had just returned from China, where he saw President Xi Jinping's "China dream", but that Malaysians had one of their own, which he called the "Malaysian dream".
"I have been to China a few times, but I don't feel at home. Come back to Malaysia, you'll feel at home," he said.
He said this could not be achieved overnight, and that in a Malay-majority country, the community had to be convinced of it.
"We must unite," he said.
Recalling a 2010 exchange in Parliament, Lim said he had asked the then deputy prime minister whether he was a Malay or a Malaysian, and that he had recently posed the question again but received no answer.
He said 1.5 million Malaysians were in Singapore making the republic great, and that in 2018 Malaysians around the world had wanted to return to build the nation, but did not because the government changed.
"This election is about the future, not the past. We must fight for our future, our children and our children's children," he said.
Johor will go to the polls on July 11.
