DAP’s Rocket queried over continued publication
By Clara Chooi, The Malaysian Insider
KUALA LUMPUR, July 13 — The Home Ministry has now queried the DAP’s Rocket newspaper for publishing without a permit, days after it failed to renew printing permits for PKR’s Suara Keadilan and PAS’s Harakah newspapers.
Political analysts have called the move to stop renewing the permits as unfair and linked it with a slew of issues dredged by the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) parties against the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) government.
The Malaysian Insider understands that ministry officials arrived at the party’s headquarters in Petaling Jaya this evening to deliver two show-cause letters, calling for the party to cease publication of its monthly newspaper.
According to a party source, this was because the newspaper, published in three different languages — English, Malay and Chinese — had been running without a printing permit since last year.
The letters apparently demanded for an explanation within seven days on why the party had proceeded with publishing its newspapers despite the expiry of its printing permits.
The two letters were however only directed to the Chinese and English versions of the paper.
It is unclear why the ministry had not issued a third show-cause letter to the Malay edition of the Rocket.
The party source said that the permit for the Chinese and Malay-language Rocket had expired sometime in September and November last year while the English Rocket permit expired last month.
“We have however already applied for a renewal of the permits.
“By convention, it always takes the ministry between six and nine months to renew the permits,” the source said.
The source added that by the time the ministry issued the permits, they would already be due for expiry in the next three months or so.
“We usually apply for a renewal two months prior to their expiry. Even then, it takes ages. This is why we have to proceed with our publication even without the permits because if we do not, the publication will never be able to run smoothly,” the source added.
The Rocket publishes a total of 90,000 copies of its newspaper every month – 50,000 for its Chinese version and 20,000 each for its Malay and English versions respectively.
The English and Chinese copies are sold at RM2 per copy while the Malay version has been distributed free since June this year, to help the party reach out to their Malay public.
Ironically, just a few hours ago today, the DAP publicity secretary Tony Pua had told The Malaysian Insider that the ministry has yet to take any action to stop the publication of the Rocket.
He had claimed that the party was often careful with its articles, knowing full well that the publication’s printing permit could be revoked at any time by the powerful Home Ministry.
However, when asked to comment on the show-cause letters later today, Pua chose to keep mum on the issue. The party will only issue an official press statement on the incident tomorrow after discussing the issue with its lawyers.
