DAP: Najib lying about party congress absentees

DAP has slammed Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, saying Najib's claim that the party did not inform 753 delegates about the party congress at end of last year is a lie.

In fact, DAP national organising secretary Anthony Loke clarified, the figure was made up of the delegates who did not attend the congress because of personal reasons.

Loke (on the left) said a report by Utusan Malaysia on Aug 16 quoted Najib as accusing DAP of being "an incredible party" because it did not dare to exercise democracy by not informing 753 delegates to attend its 16th party national congress.

At a press conference today, Loke showed more than 500 letters, signed by those delegates who did not attend the party congress, in which they said they received the notification from the party to attend the congress but did not do so due to personal reasons.

"The 753 delegates who have the right to attend (the congress) but were not informed as claimed by Najib is a lie because the figure is the number of delegates who did not attend the party national congress on Dec 12, 2012, in Penang," Loke said.

As the Registrar of Societies (ROS) had never provided the grounds to order the DAP central executive committee (CEC) to call for a re-election, he suspects Najib's statement to be the reason used by ROS to do so.

"I want to stress that the reason is a totally baseless ‘fiction' and it is a continuous lie that has been repeated hundreds of time until ROS used it as the ‘weapon' to penalise DAP," Loke said.

'We can call them to testify before ROS'

He said the signatures of the said delegates were collected by the party's assistant organising secretary, Vincent Wu, and he stressed that the DAP did not force them to sign on the letter.

"We can even ask those delegates to testify (in front of the Registrar of Societies) if there is a need," Loke added.

He also noted that Wu was not able to collect all the signatures because some of the delegates had passed away and there were some "trouble makers" who refused to sign.

Loke also said that delegates from four branches nationwide had lodged complaints with the ROS, but most of them did attend the congress despite claiming that they did not receive the notification from the party.

According to the Seremban MP, the DAP has a total of 2,576 delegates, but only 1,843 attended the congress.

However, based on these figures, a total of 733 delegates were absent during the congress, a slightly lower figure than that stated by both Najib and Loke.

Loke asked Najib to retract his statement and to advise ROS to cancel its decision ordering a re-election of the DAP central committee.

However, he added, the party had never put any hope on ROS as it is seen as the "political tool" of Umno-BN.