DAP tonight revealed that there had been a tabulation error in the results of the party elections as announced during the 16^th DAP National Congress on 15^th December 2012.

Returning Officer Pooi Weng Keong informed the media that as a result of the technical glitch that occurred in the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, Vincent Wu Him Ven was mistakenly announced as receiving the sixth highest number of votes in the Central Executive Committee.

In fact, Wu had only received 669 votes and not 1,202 as previously reported. This would have placed him in 26^th position among the 68 candidates.YU

The candidate who should haounced as in 20^{pwas in fact Zairil Khir Johari, who received 803 votes.}

Rectified error, no major consequence

At a press conference in the party headquarters, DAP National Publicity Secretary Tony Pua explained the steps that had been taken to rectify the error.

“After the error was discovered on the following day, an internal audit of the election was conducted immediately. The audit was led by Dr Ong Kian Ming who was an observer at the party’s congress but did not vote or play any role in the counting and tabulation process.”

Pua further explained that the party later appointed TCMK Associated Charted Accountants as external auditors to verify the tally sheet results. He said that both the internal and external audit teams had arrived at the same final results.

“An emergency CEC meeting was called tonight, where the party rectified the results of the election. Based on the new results, Zairil was declared an officially elected CEC member, while Wu was co-opted in the CEC,” he said.

Pua stressed that the positions of the office bearers were endorsed and the composition and positions of the CEC remains effectively unchanged.

Party officials stressed that the integrity of the voting process has not been compromised and the question of mistakes in counting does not arise.

Returning Officer apologises for technical glitch

As the Returning Officer in charge, Pooi apologised the all DAP members, delegates, and especially Vincent Wu and Zairil, whose position in the top 20 CEC had been affected.

“I take full responsibility for these errors.  I wish to record my appreciation to the Party for insisting that the correct results be made public and regret any damage caused to the Party when the mistake was mine.”

Explaining the “copy paste” error, Pooi said that it had caused the votes for candidates number 61 to 68 to be wrongly reported as exactly the same as those of candidates number 31 to 38.

This can be seen in the table below:

To rectify the matter, Pooi announced that the actual results for Candidates no. 61-68 should be:

Candidate number 64, Violet Yong, withdrew from the contest on the day of voting.

When contacted, Zairil expressed confidence that the party had acted to rectify the error in the interest of integrity and transparency, despite the risk of facing manipulation by other parties.

“This validates the hopes I had that DAP practices the values of transparency and integrity,” said the DAP Assistant Publicity Secretary.

Wu said he accepted the audited results and would continue to serve the party diligently. The DAP Assistant Organising Secretary noted that the episode had already passed as was now “a part of history”, urging party members to close ranks and focus with one heart on the upcoming battle for Putrajaya. –The Rocket