Lim Kit Siang

Unity Government and Reform · Life · 11 min read

Lim Kit Siang and Lim Guan Eng: How Did DAP Move from Opposition to Government?

One generation held the opposition bench in Parliament; the next ran Penang and the Finance Ministry

Lim Kit Siang turned DAP into a symbol of long opposition politics; Lim Guan Eng entered the Finance Ministry after ten years governing Penang. The difference between father and son shows what happened when DAP moved from protest politics to governing politics: it gained power, and also had to carry a higher cost of explaining itself across communities.