Malay Congress calls for fresh DAP polls
To avoid any unnecessary legal entanglement, DAP should move ahead to quash all anxieties and hold fresh polls since last month's one was tainted with iiregularities, says Rahmad Isahak.
GEORGE TOWN: The Penang Malay Congress wants the DAP to do the honourable thing in the face of mounting criticism on how it handled last month’s election of central executive committee members (CEC).
The honourable thing is to consider holding a fresh party election to convince people that the party is sincere in upholding democracy, congress president Rahmad Isahak said.
He added that DAP must make the correct and hard choices as a result of the cock-up in the tabulation of votes in the party polls, and this means holding fresh elections.
He said the party’s manner in mitigating the wrong tabulation of results would provide an opportunity for members to take the party to court, or the Registrar of Societies.
“To avoid any unnecessary legal entanglement, DAP should move ahead to quash all anxieties and hold fresh polls since last month’s one was tainted with iiregularities,” Rahmad said.
In the event the party decides against holding fresh polls, Rahmad then suggested that the right thing to do would be to appoint Zairil Khir Johari, who won a spot on the CEC through technical grounds, as one of the party’s vice-presidents as he was the sole Malay to be elected to the CEC.
Zairil is presently the party’s an assistant national publicity secretary.
Due to a technical “schoolboy” error, Zairil who initially received 305 votes in the contest for 20 elected positions in the CEC has now garnered 803 votes.
The latest count put him in the automatic 20th elected position of CEC, the DAP’s supreme decision-making body.
Vincent Wu Him Ven, who was initially elected to CEC at joint 5th position with 1,202 votes, has now only 669 votes and is in 26th position. But he has been re-appointed into the CEC as a co-opted member.
Token reward
Rahmad said that with the latest development placing Zairil as an elected Malay leader to the CEC, the current appointed Malay vice-president, Senator Dr Ariffin Omar, should consider relinquishing his post out of honour.
Rahmad said that with the latest development placing Zairil as an elected Malay leader to the CEC, the current appointed Malay vice-president, Senator Dr Ariffin Omar, should consider relinquishing his post out of honour.
Rahmad said the Malay community has long made up their mind that the party was mostly driven by a Chinese agenda and to oppose anything related to Barisan Nasional.
“It is tough for a Malay to be entrenched in the DAP struggle as for long the party was only associated with the causes of other races.”
It is made worst with the manner Zairil was re-elected back to the CEC as the perception sowed raised more questions than answers about DAP’s sincerity towards the community.
The Malays, particularly in Penang, are of the perception that Zairil’s win was just a token reward by DAP to the community.
This did not change the need for the community to have better representation and a louder voice in the state government, since there is a widely held belief that PKR and PAS are unable to best represent the needs of the Malays in Penang, Rahmad said.
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