Hadi Awang spits on Lim Guan Eng’s face
The Third Force
Before anything, let me begin by apologising to you guys for delaying this article. I had promised to publish this piece two days ago, but was left with no choice other than to put it on hold. The thing is, I have been feeling unusually lethargic for no apparent rhyme or reason. That said, before we get down to business, I’d like all of you to refer to the article I had written on Tuesday by following this link:
http://www.malaysia-today.net/if-the-dap-is-the-titanic-the-ros-may-be-the-iceberg/
In that article, we traversed back through time to the 15th of December 2012, the day the DAP conducted its 16th National Congress and Central Executive Committee (CEC) elections. Now, the only good thing that came out of the event was that it ended. In the days after, the party witnessed demonstrations and acts of defiance by members who believed that they had been hoaxed by the party’s leadership.
The first wave of controversy struck when the party’s former vice-chairman, Tunku Abdul Aziz bin Tunku Ibrahim, pointed out to the people that the Malays were not represented by the newly elected CEC. According to him, that alone demonstrated how Chinese chauvinism had triumphed over multiracialism in the DAP.
The Tunku’s comments touched some raw nerves simply because he was right. The party leadership had long known that an air of resentment was building up and threatened to boil over. Many of the party’s non-Chinese members were convinced that the leadership had sidelined the Malays and the Indians by design.
Still, the Tunku’s remarks would not have posed that much of a problem had the general election not been around the corner. Worried about a possible backlash by the Malay voters, the party leadership was forced into damage control. The late Karpal Singh immediately trained his guns at the Tunku and declared that the DAP was wrong to have appointed him as vice-chairman ‘straight away’.
“It was a bad pre-judgment by the leadership,” he said.
Do you see how Karpal had conveniently skated over the issue of Chinese chauvinism? I mean, he could have come right out to say, “Hey look here. I’m a Punjabi, but I’m still the party chairman, am I not?” Instead, he resorted to assassinate the Tunku’s character, which insiders insist was part of the plan. Over the next few days, the party’s cyber-troopers were having a gala time blasting the Tunku for ‘being bought over by UMNO’.
Despite all attempts to pour cold water on the Tunku’s remarks, its echo kept coming back to haunt the party leadership. Netizens charged that the DAP was truly a racist party. So venomous were the Tunku’s words that even Lim Kit Siang fumbled when asked why the former had deserted the party. What’s more, the remarks came at a time when the DAP was already accused of being anti-Islam.
Around then also, UMNO supporters had repeatedly accused PAS of being the DAP’s running dog. According to them, it didn’t make sense for PAS to pander to the DAP, as the Chinese chauvinist party was positively anti-Hudud and invoked Islamophobia. They reminded the Malays that even the Tunku had ditched the party despite being honoured as its vice-chairman. This further intensified fears among DAP leaders that the Malays would reject the party on account of the Tunku.
As a result, it is said that the party leadership had convened an informal meeting to discuss the Tunku’s comments. Then, in an astonishingly queer twist of events, the party’s returning officer, Pooi Weng Keong, announced to the media on the 3rd of January that a technical glitch had occurred in the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet the party had used to tabulate its election results.
Two days later, barely had the nation recovered from the shock announcement, Pooi tendered his resignation as DAP election director and Federal Territory committee member. On the same day, the party secretary-general, Lim Guan Eng, told reporters that he had accepted Pooi’s resignation as the latter had admitted to his ‘mistake’.
“He informed me about the mistake on Dec 17 after he did his own checking and realised the error,” he said.
Rumours began to swirl around Pooi’s resignation, with many saying it was nothing but an attempt by the party to dim the spotlight on the ‘tabulation glitch’. I mean, if indeed Pooi had informed Guan Eng two days after the election of the glitch, then why did it take 19 days for him to come out publically? As a matter of fact, why did Guan Eng not force Pooi to make an announcement on the 3rd or come out himself to clarify the mistake?
What kept them?
The biggest shocker came when it was announced that Guan Eng’s then political secretary, Zairil Khir Johari , had spring-boarded to the 20th spot with 803 votes, up 498 from an earlier announcement. The news drowned the whole controversy deeper and deeper into ambiguity. It seemed more like the Olympics than it was a tabulation error – Zairil’s ‘high-jump’ triggered suspicion that the leadership had ‘tweaked’ the results to offset the Tunku’s damaging claims against the party.
As if the controversy wasn’t already complicated, it was about to take a turn for the worse.
A large number of disgruntled party members began to demand for re-elections. When Guan Eng brushed their calls off, temperatures soared to a peak – groups of protesters took to the streets in stages demanding that the leadership come clean on the debacle. Some of the demonstrations almost erupted into brawls when certain DAP branch leaders intervened in very condescending ways. Despite all this, Guan Eng behaved as if nothing was happening.
Feeling utterly disgusted, several party members sought recourse to the RoS with complaints of electoral irregularities. Their grouses came amid widespread claims that the party had doctored the poll results to deliver an unfair advantage to Guan Eng and his cronies.
As a matter of fact, many in the party are convinced to this day that both Guan Eng and his father, Lim Kit Siang, had conspired with Anthony Loke Siew Fook and Tony Pua to rig the election from the word go. They believe that the mission had always been to prevent the party’s control organs from slipping into the hands of those who weren’t aligned with the Lim family.
Moving on, the DAP did eventually conduct fresh polls to satisfy a directive by the RoS that re-elections be held. The new poll, which was not a re-election, held on the 29th of September in 2013, was supposed to have been a ‘solution’ to the whole 2012 election fiasco. However, the new poll wasn’t without its fair share of surprises and question marks.
Perhaps, the biggest shocker came when it was announced that Liew Chin Tong (LCT), the Member of Parliament for Kluang, had trampled over Guan Eng to emerge a chart topper. Party members reacted with disbelief that Guan Eng could have tumbled to the 5th spot. To some, it was testimony that he wasn’t as popular as he may have wanted you to believe. Others were sure that that a conspiracy did in fact exist in 2012 to keep him in power.
There were also those who insisted that the so-called re-election process was just as rigged. They claimed that the party had used a new electoral roll instead of the one it had used in 2012 (which therefore makes it new polls and not a re-election). In fact, there were many who insisted that they had been prevented from attending the party’s congress as delegates. These issues have since been taken up with the RoS and are under investigation.
All said and done, can anyone tell me why Guan Eng is still the party’s secretary-general? I mean, shouldn’t he have handed over the baton to LCT? Could the fact that he didn’t mean a conspiracy exists to keep the party’s control organs within the clutches of the Lim dynasty?
Perhaps that is the reason why Guan Eng had wanted so badly to conduct a snap poll in Penang. Sources reveal that relations between him and the state’s rep for Padang Kota, Chow Kon Yeow, went to pot hours after the Penang High Court charged the former on counts of criminal impropriety.
Chow has long held a grudge against Guan Eng for being passed over as Chief Minister (CM) in 2008. Back then, Pakatan Rakyat made an unprecedented sweep in the general election that even the DAP did not see coming. Almost as soon as news broke that the coalition had captured Penang, Guan Eng performed a ‘coup’ within the state DAP chapter and positioned himself as CM-in-waiting.
Likewise, LCT was not too happy when Guan Eng persisted as the party’s secretary-general despite coming in 5th at the party’s poll. It is said that factions aligned with Chow and LCT gradually took control of the CEC and have been sabotaging Guan Eng ever since. As the story goes, the CM came to know that several members of the CEC had planned a coup right after the High Court charged him with criminal impropriety. He saw no alternative but to dissolve the state assembly and trigger a snap election.
Several DAP insiders claiming to be in the know insist that Guan Eng had planned to bring an ‘outsider’ – Anthony Loke – to contest a ‘DAP hot seat’ in Penang with intent to nominate the latter as the next CM. However, that plan went bust the minute PKR announced that it did not support the snap election proposal.
And that brings us to the million dollar question – why was Guan Eng so eager to get Datin Seri Wan Azizah’s blessings just to dissolve the state assembly? Was he honouring a pact the DAP had entered with PKR and Parti Amanah Negara (PAN) to function as a collective during polls?
No.
The fact is – and this is true – Guan Eng feared that the RoS would deregister the DAP should he have plunged the state into an election. Under the circumstances, the RoS would have reserved the right to prevent the party from nominating candidates under its banner.
Do you now see why PAS had announced that it would contest every seat the state had to offer? Its president, Dato’ Seri Haji Abdul Hadi Awang, is far smarter than any of you would want to believe. He knew that the RoS had yet to conclude its discovery into allegations that the 2012 party elections by the DAP was rigged. He realised that there was a chance DAP candidates would be forced to contest using the PKR ticket.
Under the circumstances, we would have witnessed three cornered fights in virtually every constituency within the state. And that would have been a very big problem for Guan Eng. Do you now understand how Hadi had virtually spat on Guan Eng’s face? Believe me, Hadi is the kind of guy who keeps very silent but will strike when opportunity serves him best. And as they say, revenge is a dish best served cold.
You see, even if a DAP contestant were to be a Chinese, voters would easily have mistaken him or her for a PKR candidate. Given the level of decay in PKR, the split in its leadership and the fact that all its contests would have been three cornered fights, it is fairly conceivable that many voters would have punished the party by voting in a candidate from the MCA, Gerakan or UMNO.
Guan Eng knew that without PKR’s blessings, a snap election in Penang would have been tantamount to delivering the state to Barisan Nasional on a silver platter. As a matter of fact, so did Nurul Izzah Anwar when she met Guan Eng to discuss the Penang proposal on the 20th of July 2016. The fact that she conditionally supported the proposal lends credence to the idea that she had set a trap for Guan Eng and the current Selangor Menteri Besar, Azmin Ali (refer http://www.malaysia-today.net/nurul-izzah-checkmates-azmin-ali-and-lim-guan-eng/)
Stick around guys. I’ll be back with more once I fully recover.
