Kit Siang: Difficult days for DAP

Party advisor Lim Kit Siang has acknowledged that the election debacle was the most difficult days in DAP's 47-year old history.

PETALING JAYA: The DAP election fiasco provided a field day for the mainstream media while DAP advisor Lim Kit Siang said these were the most difficult days in the party’s 47-year old history.

Lim pointed out that the mainstream media is controlled by the BN parties and they would carry bad news about DAP.

“The past three days have the most difficult days for DAP leaders, members and supporters in the 47-year history of the party.

“This is testified by the fact that the DAP had dominated the front-pages of the Barisan Nasional mainstream media and hogged the Barisan Nasional-controlled air waves,” he said in a blog posting yesterday.

The mainstream media unleashed barrage of attacks on the DAP since it announced on Thursday nights that its party election results last month carried mistakes and had since been rectified.

Zairil Khir Johari, political secretary to DAP’s secretary general Lim Guan Eng was not voted into the 20-seat central executive committee (CEC) but after the recount he got the20th position .

On Saturday, Umno-owned dailies Utusan Malaysia, New Straits Times (NST) and Berita Harian (BH) font-page reports titled “DAP vote count errors?”, “DAP Election Fiasco- Error raises doubts about party’s ability to rule country”, “DAP dramatic attempt to woo the Malays” respectively.

Yesterday, DAP’s report again went into the dailies’ headlines. The Utusan’s report titled “DAP’s drama- other issues on vote counting error”, NST’s one “Embarassing glitch” while the BH’s one titled “abnormal action of DAP”.

Hitting out the dailies for its partial reports, Lim said it was no doubt that carpet businessman, Deepak Jaikishan, whose statement against Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak had been ignored by the dailies, would came into fame if he speaks against the DAP.

“If he had made only 10 percent allegations against DAP or Pakatan Rakyat leaders that he had actually made against Najib and the BN, Deepak would be crawling all over BN-contolled media instead of the total blackout,” he said.

However, the veteran politician said none of the DAP’s leader have ever regretted announcing the error in the first place.

“We never regretted doing what is right – to be humble and uphold honesty and transparency by publicly admitting our blunder, for honesty however hard and harsh for the immediate moment must triumph in the long run.

“DAP leaders, members and supporters can continue to hold their heads high unlike others who continue to wallow in lies and falsehoods and run away from honesty, accountability and transparency,” said the Ipoh Timur MP.