Undone by an Australian secret

It has been a sensational fall from grace for the DAP politician from Sarawak who lost his seat after being exposed as having held dual Australian-Malaysian citizenship.

Joceline Tan, The Star

NOT many people in Sarawak had heard of Australia returnee Dr Ting Tiong Choon when he contested the state election last year.

But the DAP politician is now a household name following his sacking last week by the Sarawak state assembly on grounds that he had held dual citizenship in Australia and Malaysia.

It has been a dramatic fall from grace for the medical doctor-turned-politician who won the Pujut state seat in May last year.

He made history last week when the state assembly took the unprecedented step of disqualifying him as an assemblyman. It was arguably the most astonishing thing that had ever happened at a state assembly sitting and it was headline news in the Sarawak media.

The move apparently caught the opposition bench off guard even though the dual citizenship issue has been dogging Dr Ting from the day he was elected.

Neither did the media corps covering the proceedings in the press room see it coming until Datuk Seri Wong Soon Koh, the Bawang Assan assemblyman and a state minister, stood up to present the motion.

“As he spoke, I was thinking – wow, this is serious,” said a Kuching-based journalist.

Wong, famous for his stoic demeanour, spoke for almost half an hour throughout which the government bench showed their support by rapping their tables.

He provided details of Dr Ting’s dual citizenship and said that he was registered as a voter with the Australian Election Commission. He also alleged that Dr Ting was a two-time bankrupt.

It was probably the longest half hour of Dr Ting’s life and, at the end of it, Dr Ting’s political career was as good as over.

The National Constitution clearly states that a Malaysian who becomes a citizen of another country will lose his or her Malaysian citizenship. The Sarawak Constitution goes further to state that one of the conditions disqualifying a person from his seat is if the person has become a citizen of another country.

Dr Ting had reportedly obtained an Australian citizenship in 2010, returned to Malaysia in 2014, and renounced his Australian citizenship weeks before the Sarawak state election.

He went on to contest in Pujut, one of three state seats in the Miri parliamentary constituency.

In the run-up to the Sarawak polls, Dr Ting was presented as someone who had come home to serve the state.

Sarawak academic Dr Jeniri Amir, then doing research on the election, met Dr Ting whom he found to be pleasant and soft-spoken.

“I had a positive first impression. He didn’t talk much about himself but he had been moving around and he seemed to know the issues,” said Dr Jeniri.

Dr Ting had a relatively smooth campaign. He was a political novice although he delivered a well-thought-out maiden speech at his first assembly sitting.

Had he lost, he would have faded into oblivion but his victory catapulted him into the spotlight. Rumours about his dual Australian and Malaysian citizenship began swirling almost immediately.

DAP as well as Dr Ting rubbished the rumours.

However, Barisan’s Datuk Hii King Chiong, the man whom he defeated, was quietly gathering information to show that Dr Ting had not only acquired Australian citizenship but was registered to vote in Australia.

Hii, known for his aggressive business style and his “Elvis sideburns”, comes from a fabulously wealthy family in Sarawak. They own the Kingwood chain of hotels and the family fortune is said to be worth over a billion ringgit.

The Sibu-born millionaire is also a rather colourful character. He and his two sisters had fought over the family fortune after their parents died within a week of each other and it had been the talk of the town.

In June, just days after the newly-elected assemblymen were sworn in, Hii filed a petition in the High Court to nullify the results on the grounds that Dr Ting had committed an offence in making a false declaration about his status.

Hii had a strong case by most accounts but his petition was thrown out because of a careless mistake. He failed to deposit RM10,000 in cash and three copies of the petition with the Election Court registrar as required under the election rules. Instead, he submitted only one copy of the petition and a personal cheque.

Citizenship issues are very much tied up with the notion of loyalty and patriotism and it becomes ultra-sensitive when one is a public official. A political leader cannot be seen as having divided loyalties.

For instance, President Donald Trump’s alleged ties with Russia is now threatening his hold on power. Former MCA leader Tan Sri Ng Yen Yen faced a political storm years ago after it was revealed that she had once taken up Australian PR.

Surely, the DAP side did not think that the issue was buried after Barisan lost the court case? DAP has been a fierce opposition in Sarawak and both sides are always looking for issues against each other.

When Dr Ting stood up to reply to Wong’s motion that fateful day, he went to some length to deny that he was a bankrupt. But he was unable to come up with a sound explanation about his citizenship dilemma except to say that it was slanderous and politically-motivated to get rid of him.

Wong had then asked him point-blank: “Did you or did you not take up Australian citizenship?”

Dr Ting had replied: “You are the one making the allegation, you answer it.”

The ex-assemblyman has since admitted that he renounced his Australian citizenship but had never given up his Malaysian citizenship.

“What were they thinking of? The candidate had problems from the word go. A lawmaker cannot be seen to be disrespectful to our State Constitution,” said Michael Tiang, a lawyer and a political secretary to the Sarawak Chief Minister.

The local DAP leaders have been evasive about the citizenship issue simply because it is indefensible. Shortly after the disqualification, the party’s stand was to take the matter to court but a day later, the stand was to prepare for a by-election.

Had this sort of fiasco involved a Barisan candidate, the opposition would have gone up and down the country making an issue of it. Many in DAP see the issue as a “gone case” and that there is no need to prolong the embarrassment by pursuing the matter in court.

Dr Ting had been less than up-front about his time in Australia. Moreover, his storyline kept changing. He initially claimed to have returned under the government’s TalentCorp programme.

When TalentCorp denied that he was on their programme, he changed his story and said he lost interest in the TalentCorp incentives.

Some now say it was “so strange” he was picked as a candidate over others who had served the party for years. They said he “came out of nowhere” just before the state election and until today, no one in the party can really tell what he actually did in Australia apart from the fact that he is a medical doctor.

It is not known whether the local DAP leaders knew about Dr Ting’s background. If they did, then they were taking a huge risk given the prevailing Sarawak for Sarawakians sentiments.

There also seems to be some sort of blame-game going on. There have been stories that it was actually people within DAP who had leaked information about Dr Ting’s “Australian secret”.

State DAP secretary Alan Ling, who is from Miri, was quoted by a Chinese vernacular paper a few days ago as rubbishing claims that Dr Ting was a victim of internal sabotage.

Some have blamed the Election Commission for not vetting the candidate. But it is hardly possible for the EC to scrutinise the background of each and every candidate who turns up on nomination day. In fact, the law has been changed over the years to make it easy for eligible persons to contest elections.

The vetting has to start at the level of the parties selecting the candidates and there has to be full disclosure on the part of the candidates themselves.

“It was opportunistic of Barisan to go for the kill, but that is politics. On the other hand, DAP leaders have only themselves to blame for not doing proper background checks. There is also the element of dishonesty, of lying to the people,” said Calvin Yeo, an executive in a public-listed company in Kuching.

DAP should stop trying to defend a lame duck and move on.

The by-election on July 4 carries a great deal of implications.

DAP needs to retain the seat to maintain its foothold in the Miri area, and to show that it has recovered from the setbacks suffered in the state election.

Barisan would want to win back the seat to show it is gaining ground among the Chinese.

Where Barisan is concerned, UPP, which is a splinter party of SUPP, was allowed to contest in Pujut in the last round. SUPP wants back the seat and how this is resolved will be a test of whether Chief Minister Datuk Seri Abang Johari Tun Openg can sort out the rivalry between his two Chinese-based partners.

The winning side will have the bragging rights in the run-up to the general election.

In hindsight, the amazing part about this whole affair was that there are actually people who thought they could get away with something like this in the Internet age where there are so few secrets.

It is also a timely reminder to all parties to put their prospective candidates under the magnifying glass.