Keadilan Wanita today said that there was no concerted effort to lure DAP members into its fold but added that DAP members wanting to join would be 'welcome' to do so.

"If DAP members want to leave [their party] it is not because of us but if they come and say that they want to join us, what can we do but welcome them," Women chief Fuziah Salleh told malaysiakini today.

"It's only courteous for us to accept them and we can't leave them high and dry," she added.

In a press statement yesterday, DAP national chairperson Lim Kit Siang lambasted Fuziah for allegedly calling for the engineering of mass defections of DAP members to Keadilan.

At Keadilan's third annual general meeting in Kemaman on Saturday, Fuziah had reportedly said, "The issue of DAP leaving should not weaken us. This should be seen as an opportunity to attract more members from those disappointed with this action."

Lim was a guest at the AGM.

According to Lim, anybody was free to leave DAP and join Keadilan but the three-year-old party's leaders should know that to undertake such deliberate engineering of mass defections is not going to create conditions for close and friendly relations.

Misinterpreted

However, Fuziah explained that her statement had been misinterpreted and taken out of context.

"I was referring to the members of the public who had been disillusioned by DAP's pullout of the Barisan Alternatif. We need to pull the public back to us after what happened," Fuziah said referring to DAP's pullout from the opposition coalition on Sept 22.

According to DAP leaders, the pullout was due to irreconcilable differences with PAS over its Islamic state policy.

"We need to unify and consolidate now and not concentrate on internal bickering within the coalition. We need to strengthen the coalition and close ranks. The public who voted for BA are now becoming disillusioned," Fuziah said.

She also said that Keadilan would continue working with DAP even though it is out of BA.

Lim also said on Saturday that DAP would continue to co-operate with the other members of the coalition.