I refer to the letter Contributions of MCA founders don't matter any more... Limkamput wrote that '... the greatest contribution of the MCA was and is the continued erosion of Chinese Malaysian rights to equal citizenship in this country'.

I remember years ago attending a talk by the late Humphrey Ball at a service club meet in Malacca. Ball was an Englishman who had resided in Malacca since his arrival in Malaysia in the late 1940s until his death in the 1990s.

He was a prominent lawyer in Malacca and had advised the late Tan Cheng Lock shortly before independence. The biggest issue then was the automatic right of citizenship for those born in Malaysia.

Cheng Lock was fighting for this right to be given but shortly before the Reid Commission came to Malacca, he had a fall and was incapacitated. His affairs were then taken over by his son the late Tan Siew Sin.

On the morning of the sitting of the Reid Commission in Malacca, Ball received a telephone call from Siew Sin to drop this demand. When he told the Reid Commission during the sitting that MCA was not pursuing this matter, he (Ball) received a number of indecent gestures from the Chinese leaders present as observers at the sitting.

When the Reid Commission presented its report, only those born in Malaysia with one of their parents already a Malayan citizen were accorded Malaysian citizenship thereby depriving thousands of Chinese born in Malaya of the right of jus soli.

There is no written evidence to prove what I am writing but I have no reason to doubt Humphrey Ball's account.