It is well known publicly that Gwee Tong Hiang is a henchman of Lim Guan Eng. Recent development is the DAP organizing committee is facing an internal party squabble. This image will definitely affect adversely the efforts of the Northern Johor DAP election preparation.
The hot topic for discussion at kopitiam currently is whether Lim Guan Eng is prepared to let go and relieve Gwee Tong Hiang from all offices.
It is interesting to go back in history and absolutely humorous to note that the "
Wei Zhong Xian" share common written Manderin words as "Gwee Tong Hiang" in Chinese. Just in case you do not take your Chinese History lesson, Wei Zhong Xian was a notorious eunuch during the Ming Dynasty about 450 years ago.
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| Tan Chen Choon |
Prior to 2004, Tan Chen Choon tendered his resignation to the company he was working at as the company policy prohibited its employees from standing as candidates in the election. He lost his Bentayan State Seat in GE11 (with a slim margin of 428 votes) eventually. Tan lost his contest and his job after GE11. With no choice, but to earn his living and support his family, he became less active in the Bakri Liaison Committee. That left a big gap in the leadership problem that existed in The Committee.
In 2005, Gwee Tong Hiang promoted himself to be a candidate for the Bentayan State Seat, in direct opposition to Dr Boo Cheng Haw option. Because of this, Gwee severed relationship with Boo. Since then, he did not allow Boo to stay at his house in Muar. Before this, it was a practice to receive and be a host to a visiting comrade for economical reasons. And Boo's position had been replaced by Nga Ko Meng. This was obviously to set aside and also to undermine Boo’s influence.
In 2007, 17 DAP members accused Gwee of improper execution of the sale and purchase of Wisma DAP Muar at Jalan Sakeh, especially with regard to the illegal omission of commission on the sale. When Lim Guan Eng heard about this news, he rushed to Muar and
instructed Gwee to use legal means to bring the 17 members to court.
In 2008, Er Teck Hwa was elected Member of Parliament. He is an affable and patient person. But unfortunately on numerous occasions, Gwee treated Er as if the latter, was a lowly subordinate. Gwee has neither manners nor respect for a member of Parliament. Even a person of humble character, Er had no choice but to break away from Gwee.
Finally, Er decided to leave the DAP Bakri Parliamentery Constituency Liaison Committee. He left without any followers or financial resourses.
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| Lim Sey Wee |
In 2009, Lim Sey Wee, a senior party leader, left Gwee. This being so despite being a former comrade of close rapport. On one occasion before the 12th GE, Lim even cried in front of reporters in defence of Gwee, about the WISMA commission scandal.
Shiew Kok Kong has been working together with Gwee for more then a decade. He has repeatly persuaded Gwee to share party resouces. But eventually he was also kicked out from the DAP Bakri Liaison Committee.
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| Left： Shiew Kok Kong |
Although Shiew is the treasurer of Bakri Liaison Commttee at that time, in reality, he has never taken over all financial work. After a war of words through the media, Shiew eventually left the Bakri Liaison Committee which was established by him and Gwee.
In April, 2011 during the Sarawak Election. Gwee organized a supporting team from Bakri Liaison to go to Sarawak. During the campaign, Gwee demanded the members to wake up early and work till late night, and according to Gwee, this is all CEC's order. After that, he secretly brought his wife to Brunei, in order to compensate what he had missed out in the
government trip to Northern Europe offered by Johor State Government. During the campaign period, when one of the member fell sick, he only gave a few Panadol strips without sending her to the nearest clinic. In their orignal agreement before they came to Sarawak, Gwee agree to use Bakri Liaison's fund to fully subsidize for the whole trip but after that Gwee requested one of the member to pay for the whole trip with the reason that the member has proposed in the meeting that using thier own pocket money instead of party fund for the trip. That made that member pissed off.
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| Se Pei Teng |
After that, Gwee's "personal secretery" Se Pei Teng (Se is Bentayan GE12 MCA's Bentayan State Seat candidate Chris Lee's secretary). Finally she also cannot tolerate Gwee and leave him. When Se submitted her resignation letter in one month’s notice, Gwee refused to pay her the last month’s salary. Gwee also accused Se for asking complainants to pay a fee for services done. As a normal practice, the DAP Service Center does not impose any charge to complainants.
On 25th August, all these were exposed in the Bakri Liaison election Committee. Gwee was not re-elected as Chairman, and it was eventually exposed that Bakri Liaison Committee is heading for bankruptcy under the leadership of Gwee. Although within these 4 years, they have organized 4 fund raising dinners with 200 tables at each dinner function and collected more than half a million ringgit.
Frankly speaking, as a State Assemblyman who always does his job well with "longkang and lubang" complaints, he also complained about teachers beating pupils. He tries his best to make friends with Tai Ko and loan sharks, and he is also making his efforts to expand more branches in the Bakri Constituency until the extent that all his branches occupy 20% of the total branches in Johor State. That gains him a nickname of "Johor's Ronnie Liu" . Besides that, he is also making his best effort to generate more enemies that he can take in. He prevents the advancement of, and suppresses members who have good potentials. Qualified members are a threat to him.
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| Ronnie Liu |
He is in constant fear of losing his seat, status and position. He complains about reporters. He ensures that every electorate's complaint can be published in local newspapers. All these finally caused reporters to write an article to complain about this state assemblyman.
The purpose we write this artcle is obvious. But please stop guessing who we are. Are we Boo's man, Er's man, or we are sent by BN; we are cyber-trooper of MCA. Could we be also reporters from the local newspaper, or are we also anonymous. It does not matter. And Gwee has really pissed us off this time, and we have caught him with his pants down.
On 25th August 2011, the DAP Bakri Constituency Liaison Committee held its annual party election. Many branches had been told that the Bakri Liaison Committee is facing financial crisis. More important is that, most of the participants have one common thinking in mind: protecting DAP, uphold Bentayan, and they want to teach Gwee a lesson. Out of 93 qualified representatives, 71 of them have attended the party election. This could rival DAP Selangor State Committee Election last year when they tried to bring the downfall of Ronnie Liu.
When the result was announced, Gwee lost his chairman seat. Nevertheless, these participants only wanted to teach him a lesson. He survived and was voted to became deputy President. According to reliable sources, the rest of the meeting failed to break the stalemate. They did not even complete the annual fianncial and secretary report!
While GE13 is coming anytime the Bakri Liaison Committee led by Gwee has only left 2 to 3 thousand ringgit in its account. That makes one to suspect whether he still wants to continue to fight for this seat or not. The most amazing thing is that, earlier on this year, the same account had 60 thousand ringgit.
Although Gwee stated that he would raise another fund raising dinner to resolve bankruptcy dilemma but in Muar District itself, DAP had organized three fund raising dinnes within this year; two dinners by Gwee and one dinner by Er. It is almost impossible to have another round of fund raising dinner on October before the Bakri liaison Committee go for bankruptcy.
According to a bank statement from Maybank, a bank cheque with serial number 949060 revealed that, Bakri Liaison Committee has released a bank cheque with the amount of 10K ringgit for Gwee to buy a four wheel drive. But then, this car is not registered under the Bakri Liaison Committee's name, not even under DAP Central Executive Committee's name, but in the name of Gwee and four of his best men.
During the meeting on 25th August, as usual, Gwee did not list out in the
annual financial report for the so called "Bakri Sunshine Project". The "Bakri Sunshine Project" is a charity programme under the Bakri Liaison Committee's name. This project is meant to help the poor. And it had been used by Gwee for his own publicity. And the "Sunshine Project" is put under a company call "
Bakri Sunshine Project". The issue is that, why is Bakri Liaison fund was transferred to a company which is not recognised by The Party?
Although the Bakri Liaison is facing very critical financial difficulty, Gwee still tries to interfere in the operation of newly elected Committee. For instance, Gwee has requested the Committee to pay to the accounting firm to prepare last year’s financial report (with the reason that he does not know accounting), and the paint spraying fee for the new car (1 thousand ringgit). He purposely delays to surrender the account book for the newly elected committee to do the auditing for the account and caused the job transfer to become more difficult.
Besides that, even he has realized that the committee is only left with 2 thousand ringgit in the account. He demanded the committee to pay for the electricity and water bill, buying mineral water and even a few rims of A4 paper. All without foreseeing that the whole committee is running out of fund.
At the same time, Gwee has personally employed a personal assistant (previously there were two of them), but asking Bakri Liaison Committee to pay for her salary. And he left the reappointment issue for the new committee to resolve.
For those who are familiar with Chinese History, the Ming Dynasty decayed mostly due to the emperor’s overindulgence with the eunuch. Will History Always Repeat Itself? We will see.
