‘Lying’ ROS has political agenda, says DAP

Anisah Shukry | May 31, 2013

DAP defends itself against a front-paged article in Utusan Malaysia that claims the opposition party denied its members the right to vote in internal polls.

KUALA LUMPUR: The Registrar of Society’s (ROS) “baseless” accusations in Utusan Malaysia today that DAP denied members the right to vote in party polls is proof the government agency is merely a Barisan Nasional stooge, the opposition party said today.
Party national organising secretary Anthony Loke said it was unethical for ROS director Abdul Rahman Othman to have informed the Umno-owned daily of an ongoing probe into DAP’s alleged failure to provide notice to its members of the National Congress last year.

This was because DAP had only been alerted yesterday by the ROS that the party must produce evidence they had sent out notices to all party delegates of the congress, said Loke.

Loke also stressed that all statements made in the paper were “wild allegations” and that he had proof that members were given due notice of the congress – proof which he would supply to the ROS immediately.
“Not only is the [ROS director Abdul Rahman Othman] a liar, and unethical and unprofessional, but he is a tool for Umno-BN because clearly there are political motives behind his statements.

“We suspect he wants to use this excuse to deregister DAP,” Loke told a press conference at the party headquarters today.

Loke was referring to the front paged article in Umno-owned newspaper Utusan today headlined: “DAP members denied voting rights”.

The daily, quoting Abdul Rahman, said that the ROS had discovered many DAP members were not issued notices of the party’s 16th National Congress.

As a result, qualified DAP members failed to show up and were not able to vote in the party’s central executive committee last year, Abdul Rahman said.

But Loke today denied this, pointing out that delegates from three of the four branches claiming not to have received notices had actually attended the polls.

Those delegates – A David Dass, K Mahendran, FS Richard and S Kogilavani – had all registered their attendance at the congress and cast their votes, according to documents Loke showed to the media.
Action against traitors
He also said that even if DAP had failed to issue notices to the party’s branches regarding the congress, members could have easily kept themselves up to date through attending press conferences and party meetings.

“All this points to ROS shifting the goalpost [in targeting DAP]. Initially, the investigations were supposed to be about us changing the election results due to a technical glitch two weeks later.

“Now that they couldn’t prove anything against us, they have shifted the goalposts to claim that we denied delegates their right to vote,” he said.

Loke added that the party’s disciplinary committee would take action against those “traitors” who had lodged reports to the ROS.