DAP has today hit out against MCA-owned English daily The Star for lying over the reasons to reject the party's campaign advertisement.

“It is confirmed. The Star is 'The Paper That Lies',” said DAP national publicity secretary Tony Pua during a press conference today at DAP’s operation centre in Gelang Patah.

NONE The advertisement was to counter the MCA advertisement themed "A vote for DAP is a vote for PAS" with the theme "A vote for MCA/BN is a vote for Umno, (and) is a vote for Perkasa" and bearing an image of Perkasa chief Ibrahim Ali holding a keris.

The English daily claimed on Wednesday that the reasons of rejecting the advert were due to DAP's refusal to place its logo on it and amend the advertisement by removing the image of keris as requested by the daily.

The daily also claimed that it has waived the three-day advance booking requirement and given the party 24 hours to submit its amended advertisement.

To back his claim, Pua presented the email correspondence between the party's media coordinating officer Chu Yoon Ming and an advertising official of the daily by the name of Hafzan.

It showed that Hafzan rejected the advertisement in an email sent on April 30, three days before the intended publication date.

 

“Hence, it is a complete lie by The Star editors that they had bent over backwards to allow us to submit it for advertising within 24 hours.”

'Only one condition was mentioned'

The email correspondence also indicated that the only condition cited by the daily to accept the advertisement was to remove the keris - which DAP complied with - but it was still rejected by Hafzan, who cited “several considerations” that were not made clear.

“There was never any mention of use of DAP’s logo in the advertisements as accused by The Star .  

NONE “DAP willingly complied with the request to remove the keris as a condition for publication, even though other Chinese dailies had no problems in publishing the original advertisement.

“The advertisement does not incite racial tension as accused. Instead, it points out that BN and MCA are hypocrites by nominating Perkasa leaders as their candidates,” Pua explained.

According to Pua ( right ), the reason given by the daily that the advertisement “appeared to incite racial sentiments” only goes to show that The Star is equally hypocritical, for it has published continuous adverts attacking DAP and PAS over religious and racial issues.

“By publishing lies to defend themselves, The Star has proven that its editorial board possesses no integrity, has no sense of justice and righteousness, and are hypocrites of the highest order.

“We call upon The Star to apologise to all Malaysians, especially its readers, for attempting to use indefensible lies to cover up its biased attempt to keep BN in power,” he added.