Media Statement by Loke Siew Fook in Petaling Jaya on Thursday, 20^th May 2010:

DAP to consider moving a parliamentary motion to remove Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar as Election Commission Deputy Chairman for his bias, unprofessional and harsh comments about the DAP

The Election Commission Deputy Chairman Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar has called the DAP “dahsyat and biadap” in a comment in Utusan Malaysia today. He claimed that DAP leaders and members have acted out of control and blamed us for delaying the postal votes counting which resulted in the delay of the official announcement of the Sibu by-election result last Sunday.

The statement by Wan Ahmad was far from the truth and it was bias, unprofessional and overly harsh coming from the Number Two man in the EC. He was talking more like an UMNO Supreme Council member than the EC Deputy Chairman. DAP has always been cooperative with the EC throughout the Sibu by-election campaign and it was considered as the most incident-free by-election since 2008. This was admitted by the EC Chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz! How then the Deputy Chairman blamed us as “biadap”?

We must put on record that we have no role whatsoever in the delay of the postal votes result as it was the EC officials who refused to divulge the official postal votes result to our agents after the counting was ended almost 2 hours. We stopped the attempt by the EC officials to move the ballot boxes for the simple reason that we were not given the official Form 15 which is a standard procedure. It must be noted that we called the police on duty to guard the ballot boxes and we have never touched the boxes physically.

Instead of blaming the DAP, Wan Ahmad should look into their own weaknesses in handling the postal votes counting processes. If not because of the high vigilance of our postal votes counting agents consists of DAP, PAS and PKR cadres, the DAP/PR victory in Sibu would have been robbed away.

DAPSY calls on Wan Ahmad to immediately retract his bias, unprofessional and harsh comments on the DAP failing which I would propose to the DAP Parliamentary Leader Lim Kit Siang to move a parliamentary motion to sack Wan Ahmad as the EC Deputy Chairman.

* Loke Siew Fook, DAP Socialist Youth Chief & MP for Rasah