Murugiah joins MIC

KUALA LUMPUR, July 22 — Deputy Minister Senator Datuk T. Murugiah, who has been party-less since he was sacked from the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) on May 16, has finally been offered a home in the MIC.MIC president Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu said today that after long and careful consideration, the party had decided to accept Murugiah’s membership.“After a long thought only, we finally decided that he will be quite a useful person for the MIC,” Samy Vellu told a press conference after chairing the party’s central working committee (CWC) meeting here this afternoon.Murugiah also confirmed the move in a text message to The Malaysian Insider.


It was reported last month that Murugiah was no longer contesting Datuk M. Kayveas’ position as the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) president.Murugiah had been seeking to quash the Registrar of Societies’ (RoS) decision certifying Kayveas as PPP president. He withdrew his legal challenge in the High Court recently.The RoS had declared Kayveas as the legitimate PPP president and declared Murugiah’s appointment as party president on May 24, 2009, at an extraordinary general meeting invalid.On June 13, Kayveas reportedly said the party had put behind its problems with Murugiah.

Samy Vellu had reportedly remained reluctant to accept Murugiah into MIC.Today’s decision, however, raises questions on whether the MIC leadership had been forced to accept Murugiah, who is speculated to have the support of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak himself.Upon his expulsion from PPP, Murugiah toyed with the idea of either joining Gerakan or the MIC and later said that he would leave the decision up to the prime minister.

According to news reports, Samy Vellu had at first spoken out against Murugiah’s membership, saying that accepting the deputy minister would only invite tension between MIC and the PPP, both of which are Barisan Nasional component parties.The Malaysian Insider understands that up until yesterday, during a special briefing by the MIC CWC on the 10th Malaysia Plan, the party president was still against the idea. Today, however, Samy Vellu did an apparent about-turn by welcoming the former PPP Youth chief into the MIC.“I would like to announce that we have accepted him as an MIC member. The decision was made today. I would like to welcome him into the party and we hope that he will continue to carry out his activities as the deputy minister for the good of the Indian community,” said Samy Vellu, when making the announcement.

Murugiah is presently a senator and the deputy minister in the prime minister’s department in charge of public complaints.When asked if the MIC feared a backlash from the PPP for accepting one of its sacked members, Samy Vellu brushed off the concerns.“When we make a decision, we do not worry about anybody, OK? When you go for a walk, you always move forward, not backward.”
He pointed out that it was not a new practice to accept a sacked member from a fellow BN component party.“They (PPP) have also taken some of our sacked members. We sacked our Batang Berjuntai division chairman and they quickly took him,” he said.

Samy Vellu also said that as a new member, Murugiah would not be given any posts in the MIC.“The MIC constitution states that a new member into the party cannot hold any posts for the first three years of his membership,” he said.Murugiah and six others were expelled by the PPP disciplinary board for allegedly tarnishing the good name of the party and for attempting to get it de-registered.The others were Selayang chief K. Tanggaraju, Youth committee members S. Kanesan, S. Saravanan and Jeyaratnam Manium and former supreme council members R. Rajandran and NA Shanmuganathan.

Source : http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/murugiah-joins-mic/