Why should Ronnie be sacked?
By Thomas Lee Seng Hock, MySinchew
The fate of veteran DAP leader Ronnie Liu hangs in the balance as the DAP central executive committee (CEC) meets on Thursday 26 August 2010 to deliberate on, among other things, the so-called Support Letters scandal implicating him.
Speculations are rife that the CEC meeting will likely be a stormy affair, with several relatively new members adamant in wanting Ronnie punished for what is simply a minor administrative blunder on the part of the Selangor state executive councillor, for which he had already been severely reprimanded publicly by the party disciplinary committee two weeks ago.
The upstart leaders, who are generally armchair political ideologists with no or very little grassroots support, are said to want to extract the pound of flesh from the popular grassroots party leader. It is expected that Jelutong MP Jeff Ooi Chuan Ann will lead the push for a stronger action, including sacking, against Ronnie, with the allegation that the senior party colleague had damaged the party image and must be made to pay heavily for it.
Contrary to the deceptive mainstream news reports, party founding elder Dr Chen Man Hin has not said anything about wanting Ronnie removed, but simply advised the besieged Pandamaran state assemblyman to act honestly according to his conscious. It is simply unfair to interpret and construe the party life advisor’s statement as convoking the leadership to punish Ronnie by suspension or expulsion.
The whole shameful episode exploded in public on Tuesday 27 July 2010 when The Star highlighted on its front page the case of a “rogue councillor” who allegedly used a state executive councillor’s official letterhead and seal by writing his own letters of support to obtain contracts for his cronies and a family member. It is claimed that the Klang municipal councillor, a DAP member, had secured contracts worth more than RM1 million for 20 companies from the council where he had been serving since July 2008.
The ensuing development of what is merely an administrative lapse on the part of the executive councillor, later identified as Ronnie, was exploited to fullest by the political rivals of the DAP, especially the MCA. The sad thing is that the nouveau riche within the DAP itself, the junior sanctimonious upstart leaders, also cashed in on the scandal bandwagon to get Ronnie’s influential and powerful wings clipped.
