DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng today shot down claims that he is related to dead communist leader Chin Peng or that he has ties to the defunct Malayan Communist Party (CPM).

Lim said the opposition is always trying to stoke racist issues and fears of communists to gain support.

“At the end of the day (the opposition’s will say) this is all DAP fault. This has nothing to do with us,” he said after opening the Federal Territory DAP convention in Kuala Lumpur today.

Lim was responding to a Free Malaysia Today report where Terengganu Umno representative Wan Hisham Wan Salleh had alleged communist elements had infiltrated the government.

Wan Hisham made these allegations at the Umno general assembly and alleged that many recent controversial incidents like the return of Chin Peng’s ashes were all planned.

Wan Hisham had said “certain parties” were also becoming bolder in making statements as they knew they were being protected, adding that they were preparing to “take over power”.

Lim has dismissed a poster circulating on social media, showing a “family tree” that he and his deputy Teresa Kok are related to Chin Peng.

Lim said he and Kok don’t have any connection to Chin Peng.

“Even our surnames are different. I don’t want to waste my time with this.”

The ashes of Chin Peng, the former CPM secretary-general who died in Thailand in 2013, were brought into Malaysia in September by a group of friends and scattered in his home state of Perak.

Umno and PAS politicians faulted the Pakatan Harapan government over the return of the ashes, but Putrajaya denied granting permission for their return.

Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad recently slammed the opposition for politicising the return of the ashes, saying that, in death, Chin Peng no longer had influence. – December 8, 2019.