Mahathir expels party members over candidacy

Mahathir expels party members over candidacy

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad yesterday announced the expulsion of 10 members of his political party standing as independent candidates in Malaysia's ninth general elections next week.

Mahathir, who is president of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) -- the country's largest political party -- warned that members who supported them would also be sacked.

"We cannot accept them because if we do, discipline in the party will be jeopardized and everyone will contest as independents," he was reported as saying by Bernama news agency while campaigning in southern Johore state for the polls set for April 25.

UMNO, which has about two million members, is the linchpin of the 14-member ruling National Front coalition.

"People with no discipline have no place in UMNO," Mahathir said.

Party insiders said the 10 "dissident members" were standing as independent candidates to protest being dropped by Mahathir in the polls.

But Mahathir said he had advised members to respect party decisions.

"There are bound to be some who are unhappy and dissatisfied. If we give in to make people happy, we must have 10 candidates for one constituency," an indignant Mahathir said.

The National Front has already won 11 uncontested parliamentary seats out of the 192 seats in the federal parliament, as well as nine state seats out of 394 state set up for grabs in 11 state legislatures.

Meanwhile, opposition leader Lim Kit Siang yesterday vowed not to bow to threats by Mahathir to arrest him for allegedly fanning racial sentiments as campaigning for next week's polls intensified.

An adamant Lim, geared for a battle aimed at ousting the chief minister of northern Penang state, Koh Tsu Koon, said he would fight on for the people of Penang, Malaysia's sole ethnic-Chinese dominated state.

"I am prepared to be detained a third time under the Internal Security Act, " declared Lim, 54, who has twice been detained -- from May 1969-October 1970, and October 1987-April 1988 -- under this draconian law, which allows indefinite detention without trial.

The ethnic-Chinese Democratic Action Party (DAP), of which Lim is secretary-general, is mounting what it calls a "do-or-die" bid to capture Penang, Malaysia's wealthiest and most industrialized state, from the ruling National Front coalition.

Accusing Lim of stirring racial tension in his election campaigns, Mahathir on Tuesday threatened arrest, saying the government would take action against him "no matter what the world has to say."

Lim, challenging Koh in the middle-class area of Tanjung Bungah in Penang, is running a campaign portraying himself as "Chief Minister with Power," insinuating that Koh has been a mere figure-head, with the real power in the state wielded by leaders of Mahathir's UMNO.

Mahathir also slammed the foreign media for helping champion the opposition cause and warned that the authorities were monitoring the opposition campaigns very closely.

As campaigning intensified for the ninth general elections six days away, Mahathir's National Front coalition leaders heightened a concerted verbal onslaught on Lim.