DAP reelection kicks of with half of eligible members present

SHAH ALAM: The DAP special congress which began this morning saw just over half of its members eligible to vote showing up for the re-election of the party’s central executive committee (CEC) here today.

The total of 1,356 delegates who were present made up 53.94% of the party’s members who were entitled to cast their ballots, returning officer John Lau from audit firm Grant Thornton said.

He said 2,514 notices had been sent out to those eligible to attend, with another 62 having lost their eligibility due to resignations, bankruptcy declarations and death.

The reelection process started at noon.

In his opening remarks, DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng said the party was compelled to have the fresh polling due to a directive from the Registrar of Societies (RoS).

“We are here today for one reason, and one reason only – because the RoS had forced our hand to hold our fresh election for the CEC,” said the Penang chief minister to the gathering at the Ideal Convention Centre Shah Alam.

“As a law abiding party, we had fought our case legally but after months of deliberations we had come to the conclusion that we would comply with the RoS’ demands, no matter how strange, ridiculous and unbecoming some of its requests, so that the DAP is not deregistered,” he said.

A total of 62 candidates from the original list of 68 candidates are vying for 20 CEC spots.

Of the remaining six, five have left the party, namely Hiew King Chieu, V. Jaya Balan, John Fernandez, Zulkifli Mohd Noor, and Roseli Abdul Gani, while former national chairman Karpal Singh passed away in April 2014.

The gathering had earlier observed a minute’s silence for the late former secretary-general Kerk Kim Hock who passed away in August and former Perak DAP chairman Lau Dak Kee who passed away last month.

The congress comes in the wake of a dispute over DAP’s 2012 party election, which was revived in July, three years after the matter was thought to have been settled between the party and RoS.

On July 7, the RoS issued a statement saying it had instructed DAP to hold a fresh election for its CEC, having decided that DAP’s earlier reelection, held on Sept 29, 2013, was not in accordance with the law.

“RoS believes the appointment of the CEC members as well as the main position holders through that re-election, is illegal,” its then director-general Mohammad Razin Abdullah had said.

“The re-election should be based on the list of delegates entitled to attend and vote for DAP’s CEC elections dated Dec 15, 2012, involving 2,576 delegates from 865 branches,” he said.

The dispute had begun in April 2013, shortly before the 13th general election (GE13) on May 5 that year.

On April 17, 2013, the RoS had sent a letter to Lim stating that it did not recognise DAP’s CEC elected during the party’s congress the year before.

The then RoS director-general Abdul Rahman Othman said the non-recognition was due to the alleged dispute surrounding the party polls.

A re-election was eventually carried out by the DAP on Sept 29, 2013, but that too ran into problems with the RoS still refusing to recognise the CEC. - FMT