Julau membership becoming a divisive issue

KLANG: Key players in PKR are crossing swords over the alleged discrepancy in new memberships in the Julau division.

The storm in this Sarawak division is driving a deeper wedge within the party, which is already divided by factions supporting incumbent deputy president Datuk Seri Azmin Ali and former Pandan MP Rafizi Ramli in their battle for the No. 2 post.

Take for example, yesterday’s statement by R. Sivarasa, who is a member of the party’s political bureau and a loyalist of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

He sent out the statement in spite of PKR top leadership’s endorsement of the division’s allegedly questionable 13,178 new members.

Sivarasa said there was credible evidence indicating that the membership roll was illegal as it was manipulated.

He said 6,474 out of the 13,178 new members, who were added to the division’s membership roll on June 27, were contacted only over a three-day period last month to verify their membership.

Out of the 6,474 people contacted, he claimed that 5,018 did not respond to the call.

He also claimed that the 1,310 people who answered the call said they had no knowledge of joining the party.

“Out of this group, 237 said they were interested in joining the party but had never applied,” he claimed.

He also noted that there had been accusations that the 13,000-plus new names were registered using 11 addresses, adding that such talk had not been rebutted in a credible manner.

According to sources, Sivarasa and former Batu MP Tian Chua were among those who had protested against the party’s acceptance of the new members during a recent political bureau meeting.

Later yesterday, PKR secretary- general Datuk Saifuddin Nasution Ismail also issued a statement, saying that the party had decided, during its June 25 supreme council meeting, that soft copy applications would also be accepted as the PKR online membership application mechanism was congested and faced technical problems due to a surge in registration after the general election.

Saifuddin said the party had also fixed a window period of up to July 17 for anyone to raise matters about new memberships.

“In reference to the Julau division, the party headquarters did not receive any protest from the Julau division right up to July 17,” he said.

Saifuddin said the party had also received complaints about Batu division’s 1,000 new members whereby the registration forms had yet to be forwarded to the PKR headquarters.

There were also complaints received about the registration of new members in the various Selangor divisions.