Subscribe in a reader | Subscribe by Email With less than 3 weeks to nomination day, MIC president hopeful Muthupalaniappan is having problems getting nominations. He claims that branch chairpersons were being threatened not to nominate him. However he aims to persevere and hopes to be nominated. We wonder if his wishes will come true…
He said some leaders in the party were threatening the branch chairpersons not to nominate him for the top post or their branches would face closure for various reasons.
“All sorts of threats are being used. These underhand tactics are to ensure that I do not receive enough number of nominations to fight for the president’s post. If the election is not fair, then there is no point in contesting,” he told Bernama.
Under the party constitution, a presidential aspirant needs to obtain 50 nominations, and each nomination must have one proposer and five seconders, to be eligible to contest. All proposers and seconders must be branch chairpersons.
The MIC president will be picked by some 3,700 branch chairpersons nationwide. The party has fixed March 22 for the presidential nomination while polling is slated for April 12.
Quashing speculation that he would pull out of the contest, Muthupalaniappan said: “There is a lot of speculation that I will not stand but I will and shall contest.”
“They are trying to stop me by stopping people from nominating me,” he said, without disclosing any names.
“There is no level playing field. They have postponed the annual general meetings of some branches that supported me, especially in Negeri Sembilan, so that my supporters would be ineligible to vote.
“But there are branch leaders who are signing nominations for me…although many are scared of repercussions from the powers that be,” Muthupalaniappan said.
The 68-year-old politician from Seremban hoped that the branch leaders would act according to the aspirations of the 600,000 MIC members and the community, which wanted to see change in the MIC top leadership.
He also claimed that some MIC division leaders and state chairpersons, who were supposed to be returning officers in the presidential elections, were involved in campaigning.
“Under the party constitution, division leaders and state chairmen are returning officers of the presidential election.
“If they are returning officers, they should not be allowed to campaign in the election. It is like the Election Commission campaigning in an election. That is wrong,” he added.
