TELUK INTAN, May 28 — At an event yesterday, Barisan Nasional (BN) claimed that 150 dissatisfied DAP members had left the opposition party although one woman trotted out as a defector later told reporters she remains with DAP.
At the event which was officiated by Umno information chief Datuk Ahmad Maslan and attended by mostly Indian crowd of around 200 people, three ethnic Indian women were presented as DAP supporters who had shifted their allegiance to BN. They were said to have left DAP frustrated for not getting aid under the two previous Teluk Intan MPs from the party.
“Before this, they supported the DAP; now they support BN,” Ahmad declared in a speech at the function at Taman Desa Bakti here last night, in the run-up to the Teluk Intan by-election polling day on Saturday.
One of three, however, told reporters shortly after the ceremony that she and her family remained DAP supporters.
“They told me to come here, so I came lah. I’m still a DAP member,” said Sahtin Subramaniam, a 46-year-old taxi driver.
When the press attempted to ask her more questions, a man called Arjami Ali, who said he was a member of the supreme council in the Muslim NGO Pewaris, told reporters not to bother her.
He said Pewaris had brought her to the function, but declined to explain further.
“You all asked her so many questions, so she got confused,” said Arjami, when told that Sahtin insisted she was still a DAP member.
Gifts of food items
Most of the people at the function — where food like noodles were served — then crowded at a nearby house, where boxes containing Milo, milk powder, sugar, cream crackers, condensed milk, flour and curry powder were given out.
When a woman opened her box to show The Malay Mail Online the contents, Arjami from Pewaris slammed it shut and asked her to leave.
“There’s no money!” Arjami yelled when asked if there was cash inside the boxes and opened up another box to reveal its contents.
Arjami then angrily accused the media of poking and prying.
DAP’s Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud, 26, will take on Gerakan president Datuk Mah Siew Keong in a straight fight for the Teluk Intan federal seat in Perak on May 31.
