KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 12 — Ramkarpal Singh Deo has vacated his position as deputy minister in charge of legal affairs to prevent allegations that the DAP practises nepotism, the party secretary-general Anthony Loke revealed in a press conference this evening.
Loke said Ramkarpal decided so after learning his brother Gobind would return to the Cabinet as the digital minister.
“He was not comfortable by the fact that his brother is a minister and he is a deputy minister,” Loke told reporters at the DAP headquarters here.
“This will not give space to critics of the DAP (t0 claim) that we practise nepotism. There is no issue of nepotism.”
Ramkarpal is replaced by M. Kulasegaran, also from DAP, and formerly the human resources minister.
Gobind was among the new faces who joined Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s Cabinet in a major reshuffle announced this morning as he bids to improve public support amid decreased confidence in his leadership a year after he took office.
The Selangor DAP chief was previously a minister in the Pakatan Harapan government that was ousted after Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia and a faction from PKR broke away to allow rivals to form a new government. Despite his short stint as then communication and multimedia minister, Gobind was rated highly.
Speaking at the press conference this evening, the Damansara MP thanked Anwar for putting trust in him to spearhead a portfolio tasked to deliver effective messages about the government’s policies on digital media platforms, which Anwar said is still lacklustre.
But the move to split what was initially a single ministry into two — digital and communications — has drawn some criticism and concerns about redundancy and potentially overlapping jurisdiction that could add more bothersome layers of bureaucracy.
Gobind addressed these by saying challenges in digital communication and communication are too vast for a single ministry to tackle. Before the split, the two sectors fell under the Communication and Digital Ministry overseen by Ahmad Fahmi Fadzil.
Fahmi remains in the Anwar Cabinet now as minister of communication.
“I think we all realise the challenges we face as a nation in this digital era,” he said.
Still, the DAP leader admitted that the possibility of overlapping responsibilities between his ministry and Fahmi’s portfolio is something the government needs to iron out.
“The question around the extend of my ministry’s jurisdiction and possible overlapping with communication ministry must be looked into and which I will begin to work on starting tomorrow,” he said.
