Taking legal action to challenge the order by the Registrar of Societies (ROS) to the DAP to hold a re-election of its central executive committee (CEC) will prove futile, the party said today.

Although DAP maintains that ROS had acted unprofessionally in instructing the party to re-elect its CEC without giving any explicit reason, taking legal action is not an option, party secretary-general Lim Guan Eng said in a statement today.

NONE "Even when DAP wins in court against the unlawful directive to the party to hold a re-election, the party will have to go to court again to fight a possible deregistration of the party," Lim said.

"Despite the likely outcome of winning again in court against de-registration, the legal process and time taken of months, and even years, will put any political party that has been deregistered by ROS in limbo, which will not only be impractical but will threaten the party's very survival and growth," Lim said.

He added: "ROS only wants to make winter out of the spring of justice, democracy, freedom and hope offered by the DAP."

DAP had repeatedly demanded that ROS states the reasons for its decision to instruct the party to re-elect its CEC.

ROS had been probing DAP since the beginning of the year, after allegations of discrepancies during the party elections last December surfaced.

The allegations arose after an alleged wrong tabulation of votes due to a "computer glitch" caused DAP to re-shuffle its CEC line-up after a recount.

Lim's political secretary Zairil Khir Johari, was later reinstated to the CEC after a recount, despite initially missing out in the earlier vote count.