With the expiration of T Murugiah's senatorship, MIC has lost a deputy minister's post.
PK Subbaiyah, the Penang MIC chief, has been named to replace Murugiah in the senate. While it is MIC’s prerogative to replace the senatorship, filling the deputy minister’s post is up to Prime Minister and Barisan Nasional (BN) chairman Najib Tun Razak
.Sources revealed what while Najib had consented to the senatorship, he has yet to give any indication on the deputy minister’s post.
There is talk that the deputy minister’s post may go to Umno. The reasoning being that when Murugiah jumped ship from PPP to MIC, he took along with him the deputy minister’s post and senatorship.
And to appease PPP and settle the MIC-PPP squabble, Umno willingly gave up the deputy minister’s post which was originally slated for them.
PPP senior vice-president Maglin Dennis D’ Cruz was made a senator and a deputy minister.
“But since there is a ‘vacancy’ now, Unno may feel that is is its right to regain the deputy minister’s post,” a source told FMT.
MIC currently has one full minister (Human Resources Minister S Subramaniam, who is also MIC deputy president) and three deputy ministers in MIC president G Palanivel, SK Devamany and M Saravanan, both MIC vice-presidents.
While Subramaniam, Devamany and Saravanan are elected MPs, Palanivel became deputy minister by virtue of being appointed senator, following his defeat at the Hulu Selangor parliamentary seat at the 2008 general election.
The constituency saw a by-election last year following the death of the incumbent PKR elected representative. At the by-election, the BN leadership rejected Palanivel as the BN candidate from MIC and named party central working committee member P Kamalanathan to contest the seat.
Kamalanathan beat Zaid Ibrahim who contested the seat under the PKR ticket.MIC grassroots feel the deputy miniater’s post should be given to the party because they claim that they have convinced the Indians to return to BN after they deserted the coalition at the 2008 general election.
“We feel that Kamalanathan is in the best position to fill the deputy minister’s post. He is an MP. There will not be any problems in making him a deputy minister,” said a MIC leader who declined to be named.
He said Kamalanathan should be appointed deputy minister based on two counts: he is a MIC lawmaker without any government post and the party does no have any senators to fill the deputy ministerr’s post as all available MIC senators have their term expiring before October this year.
MIC had six senate positions including Murugiah. Palanivel’s tenure in the senate would only come to an end in 2013, while the senatorship of Tapah division chief S Malasingham would run out mid-2012.
The other three senators are Dalgit Singh Dalliwal, MIC Puteri chief J Usha Nandhini, and Kuala Lumpur MIC deputy head Chandrasekhar Suppiah.
Palanivel recently announced that terms of senators in the party would from now be limited to only one term.
On speculation that Murugiah will leave MIC for the yet to be registered 1Malaysia party, his personal secretary S Rajendran ruled out that possibility.
He said Murugiah, who is currently an ordinary MIC member, is happy with Palanivel and the way the party was being run and there is no reason for him to leave the party.
No comments:
Post a Comment