In 1969, a general election was held. It was the first to be contested on a major scale by non-Malay-based opposition parties, other than the 1964 election where the PAP challenged the Alliance in Peninsular Malaysia. The two main opposition parties on this front in 1969 were the Democratic Action Party (DAP) — the Malaysian successor to the PAP, widely seen as Chinese-based — and the Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia (Gerakan), an ostensibly multiracial party led by former MCA stalwart, Lim Chong Eu, and other middle-class intellectuals like Tan Chee Khoon and Syed Hussein Alatas. Both proposed policies on language, education, and Malay rights that were diametrically opposed to those of the government, with the DAP continuing where Lee Kuan Yew had left off with the "Malaysian Malaysia" campaign. Some, mostly from the DAP, called for the elevation of English, Mandarin and Tamil to official language status, along with Malay. Stronger government support for the Chinese education stream was also demanded.