Kuala Lumpur, February 14 – In a hastily arranged press conference held in a leading hotel here today, MIC President Datuk Seri G.Palanivel, stunning everyone, challenged RoS to withdraw their directives by Tuesday 5 pm, failing which he would take them to court.
He also maintained that the CWC meeting chaired by MIC Deputy President Datuk Seri S.Subramaniam is illegal and that the RoS officials should not have attended yesterday’s meeting.
This is first time in recent years a press conference had been held by a party president outside MIC HQ. By practice MIC President usually holds press conferences in MIC Headquarters. Today’s press conference was held in Seri Pacific Hotel, only a couple of yards away from MIC HQ.
While RoS was investigating the complaints on the MIC elections held in 2013, Palanivel had said he would abide by any decision taken by RoS. However, when the decision was actually announced on 5th of December 2014, he refused to accept their decisions and directives.
Only few days ago he met Prime Minister Najib together with his Deputy President Dr S.Subramaniam and Home Minister Zahid Hamidi and agreed to have elections for all positions once again.
Promptly RoS issued the letter to that effect and Palanivel declared that he would abide by the directive and began his campaign rounds meeting the branch chairmen who are the delegates voting for the Presidential election.
However, today, to everyone’s surprise he has asked the RoS to withdraw all their letters and issued an ultimatum until Tuesday 5 pm, failing which he threatened to take the RoS to court. This is the first time in history a BN component party president has issued such an ultimatum.
MIC sources said that Palanivel’s outbursts and retractions are without reasons. They said his recent campaign rounds faced dismal reception and that he did not have the required numbers. If the 800 illegal branches complained of, are deleted from MIC’s register by the RoS then Palanivel’s chances of retaining his Presidency is good as gone, pointed out MIC sources.
At this rate he would be trounced in the forthcoming Presidential elections and therefore he has decided not to go ahead with the Presidential elections, MIC sources said.
Therefore, the only way is to challenge the RoS and take them to court which eventually would take a couple of months to exhaust all the legal remedies available to him.
At least until then he would continue as the President of MIC. If not his tenure would end in May 2015, only 3 months away, if the Presidential elections takes place as scheduled.
-R.Mutharasan
