The DAP is prepared to hold fresh party elections provided the Registrar of Societies (RoS) gives it a reason and under what section of the Societies Act that it is being compelled to hold it.
Secretary-general Lim Guan Eng (pic) said the party is making one last attempt to meet the Registrar of Societies (ROS) Datuk Abdul Rahman Othman on the matter.
“We are looking for two explanations of the reasons why and under what powers of the Societies Act it is directing the DAP to hold re-elections for its central executive committee (CEC).
“The DAP is willing to hold party re-elections provided these two explanations are given in a manner that is reasonable, lawful and with factual basis,” he said in a statement today following an emergency CEC meeting last night.
Lim said the party's national organising secretary Anthony Loke will be making arrangements for the appointment with the ROS.
“The DAP leadership would be helpless in not being able to answer the queries of DAP delegates at a party congress on why it succumbed and surrendered to such arbitrary and high-handed abuse of power by the RoS in directing re-elections,” the Penang chief minister said.
Lim said if the DAP accepted the RoS rationale that no explanation is needed for the re-election directive, then what is there to stop the RoS from directing that fresh elections be called again and again merely because the RoS is not satisfied.
He said the the party's CEC is unhappy that the RoS has repeatedly behaved unprofessionally, unethically and even unlawfully by making media announcements that had no factual or legal basis.
“If the RoS believes that they have been defamed by the DAP, they can always sue us for defamation,” he said.
Lim said the CEC reiterates that the CEC election in December last year was properly and cleanly conducted.
However, several disgruntled members had complained to the RoS that it was not properly conducted after the party announced that a glitch in the tabulation had resulted in the wrong candidate being elected in the CEC.
Based on these complains, the RoS initiated the investigation and ruled that fresh elections had to be held.
“When a computer glitch caused the wrong announcement of the successful candidates, DAP immediately rectified it and even got an accounting firm to verify the corrected results. There was no mistake either in vote counting or tabulation but only in posting the results, leading to one candidate Vincent Wu wrongly announced as a successful candidate when it should be Zairil Khir Johari,” he said.
Lim said the mistake was rectified and the party installed Zairil, the Bukit Bendera MP, as the winning candidate.
Lim said DAP had fully explained this honest mistake to the officials from the Registrar of Societies by furnishing all relevant materials.
The mistake was admitted voluntarily by DAP without being exposed by ROS or BN in the interest of upholding transparency and accountability.
Instead of facts by the DAP that were verified by an accounting firm, RoS appears to believe the unsubstantiated lies of Utusan Malaysia (UM) and New Straits Times (NST) that 753 DAP delegates had been denied their right to attend the DAP congress in Penang or that there were 547 “phantom” delegates attending the congress.
Abdul Rahman had insisted a few days ago that the DAP hold CEC re-elections.
He was reported to have said that the RoS had based its decision on statements given by the party’s stakeholders.
The RoS had issued a letter last month to the party, ordering it to hold the CEC re-elections as it was not satisfied with the DAP's explanation on the issue of manipulation of votes in the earlier elections.
DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang said the party is prepared to have a public inquiry to establish the truth about the party's CEC elections as it has nothing to hide. - August 13, 2013 - 
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