How Kit Siang cheated to stay in power in DAP
Kit Siang cheated in DAP’s 15th December 2012 party election and got caught. DAP sent out the notice of the meeting just five days before the meeting instead of the required 14 days. Then 1,300 eligible delegates were barred from attending the meeting while 547 illegal delegates were allowed in. The 547 illegal delegates were then told to mark just six of the 20 names, and were also told which six names to mark, while Anthony Loke and Vincent Wu marked the balance 14 names ‘behind the scene’.
DAP: THE INSIDE STORY
Raja Petra Kamarudin
DAP is currently facing one major and life-threatening dilemma. And that major and life-threatening dilemma is not about how to entice or con PAS into joining Pakatan Harapan after kicking them out on false allegations that they had left or resigned from Pakatan Rakyat. (In fact, until today PAS is still part of the Pakatan Rakyat Selangor State Government even though Pakatan Rakyat no longer exists).
DAP’s dilemma — or in particular Lim Kit Siang’s, Lim Guan Eng’s, Anthony Loke Siew Fook’s and Vincent Wu Him Ven’s dilemma — is that DAP cheated in the 15th December 2012 AGM and party election (the 16th Party National Congress) and now the Registrar of Societies (RoS) will not approve that AGM and party election.
Vincent Wu and Anthony Loke rigged DAP’s December 2012 party election
To make sure that Lim Senior and Lim Junior not only got to stay in power but would win with the highest number of votes (1,607 votes and 1,576 votes respectively), they played a bit of silap mata (sleight of hand). DAP’s Congress was held on 15th December but the notice of the meeting was sent out just five days before that on 10th December (and not 14 days before the meeting or 1st December) as required by the party constitution.
That is violation number one and that in itself is enough to render the AGM and party election null. Short of 14 days notice the AGM and party election will be deemed invalid by the RoS and anything that the party does and decides from that date on would be equally invalid. And that would also mean not only all the elected office bearers but also the appointed ones would be considered illegal.
In total, 2,576 delegates were eligible to attend the Congress. However, 1,300 delegates or about half did not receive their notice to attend the meeting. And it was not a simple case of ‘delayed in the post because they were sent out late’. The letters never arrived because they were never sent. They intentionally wanted to bar these 1,300 delegates from attending the meeting because without the invitation letters they would not be allowed into the hall.
DAP demands that the government help the Sri Lankan Tamils but their own DAP Indian members are barred from voting in the party election
In the end only 1,823 instead of 2,576 delegates attended the meeting. However, amongst those 1,823 delegates were 547 illegal delegates, mainly those from the all-Chinese branches from Penang aligned to Guan Eng. What was even more suspicious is that not only were these 547 delegates illegal, further to that they were all isolated from the rest of the delegates in the hall and did not mix with the others. The ‘regular’ delegates found it weird especially since all these 547 were new faces and not familiar to the others.
These 547 illegal delegates were those from the category B branches, which means they can attend the meeting as observers but are not allowed to vote. However, not only did they vote, they marked just six names on the ballot paper instead of 20. These six names were Lim Kit Siang, Lim Guan Eng, Karpal Singh, Chong Chien Jin, Anthony Loke and Vincent Wu. The other 14 names were marked later by Anthony Loke and Vincent Wu after the voting ended. That was why the announcement of the results were delayed. Anthony Loke and Vincent Wu needed time to mark the other 14 names.
Karpal knew that DAP’s party election was rigged and actually indirectly said so
In short, the entire election was rigged and the 20 people who won did so on doctored ballot papers.
Those 547 illegal delegates were all Chinese while the majority of the 1,300 delegates who never received their invitations (and hence were barred from attending the Congress) were Indians. It was said that if the 547 Chinese were not added to the list of delegates and if the Indians who were barred had been allowed to attend, Kit Siang and Guan Eng would not have won the number one and number two slot. Even if they still did win it would have been in the bottom 20 and not the top two slots.
To make sure there was no slip-ups, the ballot papers from these 547 illegal delegates were all stuffed into ballot box number 13. That means Anthony Loke and Vincent Wu needed to open only one ballot box to mark the 14 names on the ballot papers. Even then there was chaos when they had to ‘re-adjust’ the names and the number of votes they won and then blamed in on a faulty Excel spreadsheet.
Tan Seng Giaw was furious and stood up to protest that he was cheated by being placed number 21 in a line-up of 20
Tan Seng Giaw who won 21st position — and hence just missed out from entry into the 20-member council — knew that there was cheating going on and he stood up to protest. Anthony Loke, Vincent Wu and Tony Pua should not have received that many votes (about 1,200 votes each) while Seng Giaw received only 802 votes (one vote less than Zairil Khir Johari).
Complaints were lodged with the RoS and because of the many complaints the RoS was forced to investigate the allegation. DAP was worried that the RoS may declare DAP illegal so in the 2013 general election, a fews month later, DAP candidates went to the nomination centres with two surat watikah. One surat watikah was on DAP’s letterhead while the second or backup surat watikah was on PAS’s letterhead. In the event the DAP surat watikah is rejected by the Election Commission (SPR) returning officer because the party was deemed illegal, then the DAP candidates would submit the PAS surat watikah instead.
DAP knew that they had committed a violation and that the RoS had grounds to deregister DAP or declare the DAP AGM and party election null and ask the party to hold another AGM and re-election of officer bearers. As a precaution, DAP’s candidates went to the nomination centre with two letters, one on DAP’s letterhead and another on PAS’s letterhead. Ironically, after helping to save DAP, not long after that DAP kicked PAS out of the coalition in a strange show of gratitude.
