KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 21 — Utusan Malaysia will face yet another legal challenge from the DAP in two days if it fails to retract, apologise and prove claims made in two articles on the alleged discrepancies in the opposition party’s leadership polls last year.

The party’s national legal bureau chief Gobind Singh accused the Umno-owned daily of printing “lies” when it reproduced allegations in a book by Father Augustus Chen, a character that DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang has repeatedly labelled “fictitious”.

“We give Utusan an opportunity, now show us where did they get this information from. Prove it,” Gobind said at a press conference today.

“And if they can’t prove it then they must be prepared to face the consequences in court,” he added.

The conservative Malay broadsheet had published a series of articles that harped on the murkiness within the DAP’s domestic polls process last week.

On August 17, it published “Akhirnya ‘drama’ dihentikan (Finally the ‘drama’ ends)” in which it reported the DAP had failed to inform 753 of its delegates about the party’s election and alleged that 547 “illegal” representatives were instructed to vote six names into its top leadership council — namely Lim Kit Siang, Lim Guan Eng, Karpal Singh, Choong Chieng Jin, Anthony Loke Siew Fook and Vincent Wu Him Ven.

The next day in its weekend edition, Mingguan Malaysia, it published another article titled, “Kit Siang manipulasi pemilihan CEC? (Kit Siang manipulated CEC election?)” that reproduced purported fraud allegations against the DAP that had been first authored by one “Father Augustus Chen” in a 16-page booklet titled “The Equity Report (CEC Election Fraud)”.

DAP’s parliamentary leader, Lim has suggested that the author cited by Utusan, “Father Augustus Chen” was a character wholly made-up by political foes in the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition and its anchor party, Umno, as part of their anti-DAP campaign.

Gobind said the Malay paper’s allegations were serious and demanded Utusan produce “Father Augusten Chen” to prove he was real.

“You must certify that Father Augustus Chen exists and then you must go on and verify the statements and allegations made by that person in that book,” the lawyer said.

“The DAP has been attacked consistently for the past few months by various portals with this information,” said Gobind, who is also Puchong MP, referring to the contents of the booklet that was released mid-June.

On January 4, DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng revealed that an internal audit showed errors in the tabulation of votes from the December 15, 2012 party elections that he said were caused by a technical glitch when the results were transferred to a computer using the Microsoft Excel programme.

This resulted in the Registrar of Societies (RoS) investigating the party over the incident and subsequently ordering a new round of elections as it was “dissatisfied” with DAP’s explanations.

The DAP had resisted the order until last week, and is expected to hold a leadership re-election sometime in November.