DAP says willing to hold public inquiry on party polls
(MM) – The DAP offered today to hold a public inquiry into its party polls last December, saying it had “nothing to hide” over the episode which has now led to a directive for it to go for a fresh leadership election.
The DAP and the Registrar of Societies (RoS) have been in a deadlock over the matter since July 30 when the party refuse to comply with the authority’s order for fresh polls.
DAP’s Lim Kit Siang claimed today that the RoS director-general had “acted arbitrarily” when he failed to offer a reason for his fresh polls directive.
”DAP is prepared to have a public inquiry to debunk all the lies and falsehoods concocted by the Umno/BN “DDD” squad, but is the RoS prepared to have such a public inquiry to establish the real truth?” Lim asked in a statement today, referring to the “Demonise, Destroy DAP” (DDD) phrase which he had coined.
Lim claimed that DAP’s leadership had not received any complaints over last year’s internal polls, saying that unhappy party members should have been directed to resolve the matter with the party first.
”It is most sinister and extraordinary that not a single complaint about the CEC elections last December had been received by the party leadership in the past six months.
”Why didn’t the RoS ask those in the party who were genuinely aggrieved about the holding of the DAP CEC elections last December to complain and use the internal party channels first, before lodging reports with the RoS if not satisfied with outcome of complaints inside the party?” the DAP parliamentary leader said.
The Gelang Patah’s statement also comes after the surfacing of a 16-page booklet titled “The Equity Report (CEC Election Fraud)” written by one “Father Augustus Chen” whom Lim describes as a fictitious figure.
Lim described two key allegations in the booklet as being false, namely the claim that there were 547 phantom DAP delegates and 753 DAP delegates were not given notice to attend and vote in the DAP congress.
Earlier this week, DAP’s secretary-general Lim Guan Eng challenged the RoS director-general Datuk Abdul Rahman Othman to meet him face-to-face and explain the authority’s insistance on DAP having fresh elections.
On July 30, RoS issued the DAP a letter ordering it to hold new elections, citing the reason that it was not satisfied with the party’s explanation of its elections on December 15 last year.
DAP had responded with a written reply demanding for explanations while refusing to hold the re-elections until they were given a valid reason.
But Abdul Rahman reportedly said this week that the RoS had based its decision on statements given by the party’s stakeholders when it ordered the party to hold re-elections of the CEC.
He had said the Societies Act 1966 did not provide a need for RoS to explain its reasons for the decision.
The party had admitted its mistake that a computer glitch at the party congress and CEC elections last year that had caused the wrong announcement of the successful candidate.
Lim Guan Eng had said there was no mistake in vote counting or tabulation as the mistake was only in the posting of the results that led to one candidate Vincent Wu wrongly announced as a successful candidate when it should be Zairil Khir Johari.
He said that the mistake had been rectified and the party had also explained the honest mistake to the RoS officals, while also providing full cooperation and all relevant materials.
