Kuala Lumpur – In a surprising turn of events, key leaders of the so-called ‘Palanivel faction’ of MIC met in Kuala Lumpur yesterday and made several decisions, the most important being severing all ties with former party President Dato Seri G.Palanivel himself and dropping him as the leader of the faction. The group decided that Datuk S.Sothinathan and Tan Sri S.Balakrishnan would henceforth lead the group.
Palanivel did not attend the meeting yesterday which was called as the “2009 interim CWC meeting”. Several state leaders and former CWC members aligned to Palanivel’s faction attended the meeting and criticized Palanivel’s poor leadership which they claimed was the key reason for the faction’s miserable failure.
Sothinathan’s meeting with the PM
Sources close to the group and some of them who attended the meeting yesterday said the decision comes in the awake of Sothinathan’s meeting with the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.
Sothinathan is said to have briefed the meeting yesterday about his meeting with the PM on the 2nd of November 2015 in which the PM made it clear that Palanivel is not acceptable anymore as the MIC President to the BN leadership. However, PM told Sothi, there is no problem in accepting and embracing the others into the MIC and BN fold.
As a follow-up to his meeting with the PM, Sothinathan was asked to meet Tengku Adnan, the Secretary General of UMNO and Barisan Nasional, on the next day (3rd November). The outcome of Sothi’s meetings with the PM and Tengku Adnan is said to be the reason behind the group’s decision to drop Palanivel as their faction’s leader at yesterday’s meeting.
The meeting yesterday decided that from now onwards Sothinathan and Tan Sri Balakrishnan would jointly lead the group and make decisions on their next course of action.
Representatives to meet Dr Subra
As a first step, the meeting yesterday decided that they will send a negotiating team to meet MIC President Datuk Seri Dr S.Subramaniam to work out a peace-formula to determine a time-frame for the branches and leaders currently out of MIC to return to the fold.
The team would comprise of former MIC Batu Division Chairman A.K.Ramalingam, former Secretary General of MIC Kumar Amman, former Information Chief Sivasubramaniam, Kalai Chelvan (Kajang Kalai), and former CWC member lawyer S.Murugesan.
The following are some of the proposals decided at the meeting yesterday which will be submitted by the team to the President of MIC:
- To allow all the MIC branches which did not participate in the recent re-elections to pay their respective subscription quotas and to admit them back into the party with full rights.
- To allow these branches to pay their quotas until 15 January 2016 instead of the current dateline of 15 December 2015.
- To accept all the members and leaders back into MIC with full membership rights
- To convene the triennial party elections in 2016 as provided under the MIC Constitution.
The decisions taken at the conclusion of the so called Palanivel faction’s meeting yesterday confirms that the group has finally axed Palanivel as their leader and has now decided to return to the MIC fold under the leadership of Dr Subramaniam.
The sources also pointed out there have been no responses from the MIC President as yet on the above proposals. The sources also said, however, Dr Subra has given a positive nod for the group to meet him and to discuss further.
-R.Mutharasan
