KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 10 — Karpal Singh agreed to holding internal elections on September 29, DAP advisor Lim Kit Siang said today in disputing reports that the party chairman was overruled on the matter.

Describing the categorisation of Karpal being against the date as part of a so-called “Umno/BN Demolish/Destroy DAP (DDD)” conspiracy, Lim said there was no truth to reports of irregularities surrounding the notification and timing of the party election ordered by the Registrar of Societies (RoS).

“Just for the record, the decision on the holding of the Special Congress on September 29, and all matters related to the Special Congress, received unanimous support of all CEC members, including Karpal,” Lim said in a statement today.

Several media outlets had seized upon Karpal’s earlier remarks that the election will be held in November, to allude to a rift between him and DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng on the matter.

Earlier in the statement, Lim reiterated allegations that the RoS has been co-opted by Umno as part of the DDD campaign, pointing to the agency’s increased intent to take action against the party based on unverified allegations.

“Initially, in the early phase of the UMNO/BN ‘Demolish/Destroy DAP’ campaign, the RoS Director-General was fairly independent, impartial and professional, as evidenced from Abdul Rahman's statement in January that DAP CEC re-elections ‘would only occur if there was concrete evidence there were discrepancies in the CEC election process’.

“But in the past few months, the RoS DG succumbed to the pressures of the Umno/BN DDD conspiracy to undermine, destabilise and destroy the DAP as evident from the fact that the RoS DG was unable to state in writing the ‘concrete evidence’ of the ‘discrepancies in the CEC election process’ as to justify his directive for a CEC re-election to be held,” Lim said.

On January 4, it was 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.

The amendments resulted in Lim’s political secretary, Zairil Khir Johari, moving up from 39th position to 20th ― the last elected position in the party’s CEC.

Following complaints by some members, the RoS began investigations and subsequently ordered the party to redo its elections after saying it was not satisfied with the explanation given.

After prolonged public wrangling the Registrar, the party last month finally gave up its fight and agreed to hold the fresh election as directed.