A worried DAP ready to go to court if party deregistered

(MMO) – With less than a year to the 14th general elections, the DAP has prepared a legal team and is ready to challenge the Registrar of Societies (RoS) in court if deregistered.

“We have been waiting under this Sword of Damocles since before the last GE.

“We have a legal team ready to take all necessary actions,” its national publicity secretary Tony Pua told Malay Mail Online when asked his party’s contingency plan.

Stakes are high for the DAP ― which swept 38 parliamentary seats out of the 89 won by the Opposition in Election 2013 ― if it is deregistered and made illegal with new polls on the horizon.

The deregistration risk is one that has been persisting since April 2013, when the RoS refused to recognise the DAP’s new leadership line-up from its December 2012 internal party elections, though the societies regulator allowed it to contest in the May 5 general elections that year using its iconic rocket symbol.

But Pua played down the deregistration risk, saying his party had conducted internal re-elections for its central executive committee in 2014 as instructed by the RoS.

“We have already held and completed our re-election as instructed, in 2014. There has been zero instruction from RoS since then,” the Petaling Jaya Utara MP added.

Earlier this week, DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang said he would consider retiring from politics if it would prevent his party from being deregistered ahead of the next general elections.

Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has said that DAP’s fate is expected to be known next week when he meets RoS director-general Datuk Mohammad Razin Abdullah.

Zahid, who is also the deputy prime minister, however, said he “does not see any effort to deregister DAP or otherwise”.