Why isn’t DAP backing Tan on local elections, asks Rama

FMT:

Why isn’t DAP backing Tan on local elections, asks Rama

The ex-DAP man supports local council elections but questions if his former party will give in to Umno’s pushback against Tan Kok Wai’s proposal.

Former Penang deputy chief minister P Ramasamy said no senior DAP figure has come out yet to back Cheras MP Tan Kok Wai’s proposal.


PETALING JAYA: Former Penang deputy chief minister P Ramasamy has questioned the DAP leadership’s apparent silence over Cheras MP Tan Kok Wai’s call for local council elections in Kuala Lumpur.

Noting the pushback Tan had drawn over his proposal, including from Umno leaders, Ramasamy pointed out that no senior DAP figure had come out to back the Kuala Lumpur DAP chief yet.

“It doesn’t matter what the nationalists in Umno and other Malay political parties think about local government elections, but what is the principled stand of the DAP leadership?” he said in a statement.

“Umno nationalists are already protesting against Tan’s proposal. Is the DAP leadership willing to provide the political backing for Tan? What is the stand of DAP’s secretary-general Loke Siew Fook?

“Or are the DAP leaders going to engage in appeasement politics to calm the ultra Malay nationalists in Umno? Is the DAP leadership about to invoke its infamous line, ‘the party has its own way of dealing with dissent’?”

Ramasamy, who quit DAP in August and went on to form his own party Urimai, said he supported local council elections and that these could be gradually reintroduced.

He maintained that local elections would benefit Kuala Lumpur residents as local government officials would be elected and made accountable to the public.

“It is not that local government elections are something new in the country. They were scrapped in the 1960s. Surely, as suggested by Tan, at least we can think about the idea.”

Over the weekend, Tan urged Putrajaya to start local government elections in the capital city first to bolster democracy, a proposal that Umno Youth chief Dr Akmal Saleh called “insensitive and provocative”.

Umno secretary-general Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki also protested the proposal, saying in a Facebook post that the people should not be dragged into never-ending political conflict.

Earlier today, federal territories minister Dr Zaliha Mustafa said she would discuss the proposal with local government development minister Nga Kor Ming, who is of DAP.

While she said there were matters of higher priority to deal with, she did not rule out the importance of such elections.

Earlier this year, Nga said there were no plans yet to reintroduce local government elections, which were suspended in the 1960s and replaced with a system of appointed heads, where state mayors of city councils and presidents of municipal and district councils are appointed by the state governments.