DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang says there are no plausible grounds for the Registrar of Societies (ROS) to de-register the party.

This matter, he said, had never been raised by anyone in DAP, whether the leadership or its members.

The statement by ROS director-general Abdul Rahman Othman that DAP members want to set up a new political party in order to purge political enemies, Lim said, was “fictitious”, a baseless scenario concocted by Umno and BN propagandists to character-assassinate the DAP leadership.

Lim also called the report on this that appeared in the MCA-controlled The Star daily as studded with falsehoods and groundless, and questioned the independence, impartiality and professionalism of the ROS director-general in saying so.

Abdul Rahman was quoted by The Star as saying that the DAP members have been told not to harbour hopes of forming a new party should the ROS decide to de-register it.

“They can apply. But the right to approve is with the ROS. We did not even entertain 29 applications to set up new parties submitted over the last five years,” the director-general is quoted as saying.

dap national congress 161212 new cec line up Asked if the party should hold a fresh central executive committee (CEC) election, Abdul Rahman told the daily that it would be better for DAP to “take the initiative to save the party rather than harbour false hopes of setting up a new one.”

Lim said Abdul Rahman should explain what he meant by “initiative to save the party” as there has been no requests for a fresh CEC election, except from “Umno propagandists”.

Alluding to political interference, the Gelang Patah MP said the coming Umno elections may indicate that the ROS decision on the DAP “is not going to be a professional one, but a political one”.

The DAP is being investigated by the ROS after a mix-up in the last CEC election, which saw present Bukit Bendera MP Zairil Khir Johari elected into the CEC, instead of another candidate, Vincent Wu.

The DAP blamed this on a technical computer glitch.