DAP rejects conspiracy claim

Anthony Loke says Utusan Malaysia has spun another lie.

PETALING JAYA: DAP today denied an allegation that its leaders were conspiring to kill off branches and divisions that had complained of irregularities in the conduct of last December’s party polls.

Anthony Loke, the party’s national organising secretary, denounced the Utusan Malaysia report  on the allegation, saying it was the latest in a series of lies that the Umno-owned paper had spun about DAP.

The report, appearing on Utusan’s front page today, quoted an unnamed “senior DAP leader” as saying that the party had instructed its state leaders to hasten preparations for their annual general meetings.  However, many divisional leaders were not “fully aware” of the instruction, the paper added.

The senior leader, according to Utusan, speculated that this was part of a conspiracy to downgrade certain party branches and divisions so that they would not be able to vote if the Registrar of Societies (ROS) decided to order a re-election of DAP’s central executive committee.

“The DAP leaders will accuse these branches and divisions of not holding their AGMs on time to shut them down, when the truth is that they were not notified,” the Utusan source allegedly said.

Loke, speaking at a press conference, challenged Utusan to name its source and said the party would respond to the allegation if an official complaint was lodged with ROS.

He said the allegation was nonsensical. “Even if ROS instructs us to hold fresh CEC polls, we’ll have to use the previous list of branches.”

He said the branches and divisions were supposed to conduct their AGMs by May, but the deadline was pushed to this month to accommodate the 13th general election.

“The deadline to hold the AGMs is now June 30,” he said. “Some of the branches have done so and some have not.  Some of these branches need time because they need to submit documentation to ROS.”

Asked whether he would file a suit against Utusan,  Loke said, “We’ve already taken so many legal actions against it and won, but these won’t not stop Utusan from lying.

“It lies about us almost daily. How far is it planning to go?”