GEORGE TOWN, May 19 — An internet smear campaign against DAP’s Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud was solely the product of pro-Barisan Nasional (BN) bloggers, the political party said today in brushing off allegations by Umno-linked Utusan Malaysia of having laid a “trap”.
DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng condemned the Malay-language daily for publishing such allegations against him and his father, Gelang Patah MP Lim Kit Siang, and insisted the newspaper was continuing to target Dyana because she is a woman.
“Pro-BN bloggers had started the smear campaign against her by publishing photos of a Filipino actress in a bikini by claiming it is Dyana and now Utusan Malaysia is defaming the party by alleging that this smear campaign was started by me and my father,” Guan Eng said in a press conference after the opening of the state legislative assembly sitting today.
He was responding to an article published in Mingguan Malaysia yesterday that claimed pro-BN bloggers were trapped by DAP into starting a smear campaign against Dyana in publishing photographs of a woman in a bikini who they alleged to be her, but which turned out to be that of a Filipino actress.
The newspaper quoted a political analyst named Shen Yee Aun who alleged that a faction in DAP aligned to the “Lim family” had allegedly spread the photograph of Filipino actress Pauleen Luna in a two-piece swimsuit through the so-called Red Bean Army (RBA).
RBA is the moniker used by Utusan Malaysia to refer to an alleged online operation of cybertroopers supposedly funded by the DAP, which the party has repeatedly denied.
Dyana, who is also political secretary to party veteran Kit Siang, is DAP’s candidate to face a straight fight against BN’s Mah Siew Keong for the Teluk Intan May 31 by-election.
The Teluk Intan parliamentary seat was vacated after the late MP Seah Leong Peng recently died from cancer.
In the May 5 general election last year, Seah defeated BN’s Mah with a 7,313-vote majority.
