MIC leader: I met Anwar but…

The MIC central working committee member said that he met the Opposition Leader as an editor of a weekly Tamil newspaper .

PETALING JAYA: A MIC central working committee (CWC) member said he met Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim on Wednesday but the meeting was not about crossing over to PKR.

G Kumar Aman said he met Anwar to interview him for a weekly Tamil newspaper.

“I met Anwar in my capacity as founder and editor for Tamil weekly newspaper, Makkal Aatchi,” said Kumar .

There was a lot of speculation over Anwar’s hour-long meeting with three MIC CWC members and six party Youth division chiefs at the PKR headquarters.

On claims that there were two other CWC members there, Kumar dismissed it outright saying, “I was the only MIC CWC member there. Even those who followed me were not from my party but from my NGO, Aastivaram Foundation.”

Talk was that Anwar was trying to convince the MIC leaders to shift their allegiance to PKR.

The Permatang Pauh MP confirmed the meeting took place via his reply to a Twitter message on the same day.

Kumar said that he had always admired Anwar since young, due to the latter’s achievements in national politics.

“During my interview, Anwar told me the things he had done for the Indian community during his stint in the Cabinet. He is still concerned about the Indian community and their plight,” he said.

During their conversation, Kumar said he mooted the idea of setting up a minority affairs bureau under PKR to Anwar, in order to address the plight of the Indians.

“Anwar told me that he will consider the matter,” said Kumar.

He said that he could not understand why some quarters had tried to manipulate the matter into a political issue when it was a mere interview session.

He added that it was nothing wrong to meet leaders from the opposition bloc as Malaysia is a deomcratic nation.

“I had interviewed Bersih chairperson S Ambiga on June 2 which will be published next month.

“I’m also trying to get an interview with former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, former MIC president S Samy Vellu and Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak,” said Kumar.

He said that he will always remain loyal to MIC as he was grateful to party president G Palanivel for bringing him back into the party fold.

Kumar said that under Palanivel’s leadership, MIC was moving in the right direction to win back the Indian support for BN.

“I was in political wilderness after Samy Vellu sacked me from the party in 2010. Not only Palanivel re-admitted me into the party but he also reinstated my CWC position. I know what gratitude means,” he said.

Kumar was one of the three founding members of Gerakan Anti-Samy Vellu (GAS) which was set up in 2010 to oust then party president Samy Vellu.

The other two members were fellow MIC CWC member KP Samy and deputy Youth chief V Mugilan.