Penang PKR has questioned the credibility of the 200 members said to have quit the Bayan Baru branch yesterday.

NONE State liaison committee chief Mansor Othman ( left ) has demanded the branch’s permanent chairperson to show proof of the members who had reportedly thrown in their resignation.

“Who are they? Can I please have their names?” Mansor, who is deputy chief minister (1), asked reporters at a press conference in the Dewan Negeri building today.

Yesterday, permanent branch chief Ismail Mohd Ali cited “loss of confidence in the party” for the reasons behind the group’s resignation.

However, he said that the members – including a division committee member – would not be joining any other party for the time being.

He criticised the party’s leadership for picking ex-Umno minister and lawyer Zaid Ibrahim as Hulu Selangor candidate, saying it was not in the interest of the rakyat.

The group joins a string of resignations from PKR over a variety of reasons since February.

The quit announcement came right after the Hulu Selangor by-election nomination day on Saturday, where Zaid will meet BN candidate Kamalanathan, a trained public relations officer and Johan Diah, a Felda settler and entrepreneur in a three corner fight on April 25.

Businessman VS Chandran dropped out of the race today, claiming that he loves and supports BN.

Not even committee member

Meanwhile, the Bayan Baru PKR division has expressed gratefulness to arch-rival Umno for ‘getting rid of its garbage’. Deputy division chief Tan Seng Keat said Umno was paying ‘big bucks’ to get rid of the party’s dirt by luring away its members.

"Thank you Umno for making us stronger; with your help, we are definitely sure we can conquer Putrajaya in the coming general election. Right now, it is by-election season and more than that, it is also frog jumping season; it’s happening all over, from Hulu Selangor to Sibu," he said.

Meanwhile, Tan clarified that Ismail’s position as permanent chairperson was only significant once a year. "The function of the permanent chair is to chair the division’s annual general meeting and Ismail has being doing that for about eight years," he said.

"He is not even a committee member of the division; he was never involved in the running of the division and has no influence on the direction of the division," he added.

Tan said Ismail did not even attend the monthly division meetings and the division had written to the disciplinary board on March 12 to request for action against the former for going against party interests.

"Ismail leaving PKR has not caused any weaknesses in the division and I doubt if he managed to convince 200 members to join him," he added.

"He was even finding it difficult to start his press conference on time because initially there was only a few people there; he had to call around consistently for half an hour to get another seven people to attend," Tan claimed.