Singapore, May 18 (IANS) A Malaysian Indian politician of the Democratic Action party (DAP) has asked the party’s Chinese-origin secretary-general to apologise to the Indian members of the party.
N. Gobalakrishnan has asked Lim Guan Eng to apologise to over 700 Indian members of the party after they were stopped from attending the party’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) meeting last year, the New Straits Times reported.
“He (Lim) shouldn’t treat the Indian members like that as they, too, like him, have voting (rights),” Gobalakrishnan was quoted as saying.
“It was an important meeting, where DAP elected their main council members… how could over 700 Indians not be a part of it?”
The DAP, with 38 members of parliament (MPs), sits in the opposition in the country’s parliament after the May 5 general elections in that country.
Though the party’s main base is Malaysian Chinese, it receives support from ethnic Malaysians and Indians too.
Gobalakrishnan, a former MP from the Padang Serai in that country’s Kedah state, also sought Lim’s clarification regarding rumours doing the rounds that the latter was seeking to de-register the party.
“I want him to explain the rumours of him wanting to de-register DAP,” he said.
“Word is, when he registers DAP as a new party, he will purposely leave out the branches that were headed by Indian DAP leaders,” he alleged.
A total of 2,576 members of the party should have voted to elect 20 members of the party’s CEC.
Yet, 753 of them, all Indians, were not able to present during voting.
After that, there have been demands from various quarters that a re-election be held for the CEC.
Ethnic Indians comprise a little over seven percent of Malaysia’s total population of nearly 30 million.
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Gobalakrishnan was an Independent MP n not a member of the DAP