Sunday, December 1, 2013

Sothi makes comeback as VP line-up signals major shifts


MIC's new vice-president line-up signalled a major shift away from incumbents as unofficial results showed former deputy minister and vice-president S Sothinathan (below) making a comeback by winning a VP seat with the highest number of votes today.

NONEDeputy Youth and Sports Minister M Saravanan was the only incumbent who retained his spot, while Perak state assembly speaker SK Devamany failed to defend his post.

Treasurer-general Jaspal Singh took the third VP spot, narrowly beating Johor's S Balakrishnan, who emerged as a surprise dark horse in the contest.

However, their votes are so close that there is a recount. The official results will be announced tomorrow.

It is expected that former MIC Youth chief T Mohan has also missed out in the eight-cornered VP contest.
Delegates' thirst for change 
The unofficial results mark a surprising comeback for Sothinathan, who is best known for refusing to toe party lines when he led criticism against the government's de-recognition of Ukranian medical universities in 2005, affecting the studies of many Indian Malaysians.

It got him suspended as a deputy minister and subsequently he lost his VP post in 2009 after failing to defend his Teluk Kemang parliamentary seat in the 2008 elections.
The new VP and central working committee (CWC) line-up is supposed to serve until 2016. The delegates' thirst for a change in leadership could mean that MIC will face a major overhaul in three years’ time.

After initial markings of a contest for the president and deputy president posts, both posts were returned uncontested by Palanivel and his deputy S Subramaniam earlier this year, following the trend of post-election leadership stability.

From the evidence of tonight's results however, the MIC delegates were ready to vote for complete leadership changes if the top two posts were indeed allowed to be contested.
‘Lucky draw’ for CWC seats

Meanwhile, the party had to choose its last two CWC members by holding a ‘lucky draw’ after three candidates were tied with the same number of votes.

K Palanisamy and ML Maran were both chosen through the draw after Palanivel pulled their names out from a bowl, forcing out the third candidate, A Ananthan.

The decision to hold a ‘lucky draw’ pretty much summed up the tense and chaotic election process which dragged on until late tonight with many of the 88 candidates running in close battles to fill the 23 positions on offer.

Delegates, who were made to wait for hours before any semblance of results, cheered when the CWC results came through but later started groaning in displeasure when MIC election committee chairperson K Kumaran announced that the vice-president post results had to be postponed to the next morning.

Following the abrupt announcement, delegates were immediately asked to leave the hall and told to reconvene tomorrow morning.

The full CWC list
1. R Raghu Moorthy
2. S Murugesan 
3. A Parthiban
4. A Sakthivell
5. MS mahadevan
6. Ranbir singh
7. Sunther Subramaniam
8. P Kamalanathan
9. G Kumar Amman
10. P Palaniappan
11. VS Mogan
12. A Prakash Rao
13. V Elango
14. N Vithyananthan
15. J Thinakaran
16. R Goonasegaran
17. P Subramaniam
18. AK Ramalingam
19. M Asojan
20. A Ganesan
21. Henry Benedict Asirvadam
22. ML Maran
23. K Palanisamy

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