DAP says will sue Keshvinder, Hee

The DAP will take legal action against its two defected Perak assemblymen — Keshvinder Singh and Datuk Hee Yit Foong — for breaching the contracts of loyalty they had signed during Election 2008.

Perak DAP chief Datuk Ngeh Koo Ham said the contracts stipulate that the representatives had to resign from their seats and pay RM5 million if they decided to defect.

“The DAP Malaysia will file the suit. In principle, the top leadership has agreed to this — I have conferred with several top leaders including Lim Kit Siang, Lim Guan Eng and Karpal Singh and they have agreed.

“However, out of respect for the total leadership, we will only file the suit after the party’s central executive committee meets on June 21,” he told reporters in Parliament today.

Keshvinder, the Malim Nawar assemblyman, announced yesterday that he had quit the party so that he could obtain development funds for his constituency from the Barisan Nasional state government.

Hee had left in early 2009, along with two former PKR representatives, triggering the fall of the then Pakatan Rakyat state government.

The DAP liaison bodies for Negeri Sembilan and Perak had compelled its elected representatives to sign the loyalty pledges during the March 2008 general election, as a method to prevent party-hopping.

In Perak, the party’s elected representatives were required to pledge their loyalty by agreeing to resign from their state seats and pay a fine of RM5 million if they were to leave the party.

DAP deputy chief M. Kulasegaran said that all of the party’s state committees were given the jurisdiction to decide on how to ensure the loyalty of its elected representatives.

“This is because there is no anti-hopping law in the country. To ensure the loyalty of our representatives, we imposed this so when the candidates were given the green light to contest on the DAP ticket, they were required to sign these contracts,” the Ipoh Barat MP said during the press conference.

Ngeh, however, added that if Hee and Keshvinder were to fulfil the terms of the contract, the legal suit need not be filed.

“We will send them letters of demand, so if they comply, then there is no need to take this to court,” he said.

He explained that the party had only now decided to enforce the contract as it believed that the defectors should not be allowed to “benefit” from leaving the party.

He alleged that both Keshvinder and Hee had only defected after accepting bribe offers from Umno agents.

“I would like to state here that action was not taken earlier for we thought that if we enforced the contract, people would accuse us of trying to gain benefit from this.

“We decided to impose the contract because we wanted to concentrate on our abhorrence over their betrayal to the people rather than to gain something from it,” he said.

Ngeh claimed, however, that the general belief now was that even the public did not want the defectors to benefit.

He said that the party would obtain feedback from the people on whether legal action was a good idea, through reading comments on news portals and blogs.

“For now, however, we believe that if the public knew of such an agreement, they would agree that we should not let these defectors off with millions in their pockets.

“We pledge that whatever sum we obtain from this legal action, will go to the people — whether to help the party in its struggles for the people or whether in a programme benefitting the people,” he said.



comments


Good one Ngeh...get the RM5 million from Mr Singh and the Jelapang frog and use it for the constituency of Jelapang and Malim Nawar......these two are a disgrace...Mr Singh ....i am from Malim Nawar and went all out to ask my fellow friends to vote for you...you may not remember, i was all along with you trying to convnce all the people there that you are young, educated and a better candidate than the MCA candidate.....all in vain...Mr Singh i hope you regret this action of yours.....forever...if you have the guts resign and recontest....