Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Storm brewing in MATTA

The tussle for the leadership of the Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents (MATTA) has taken a controversial turn with allegations of phantom voters and a vote of no confidence against the new president and his deputy.

Even the vote of no confidence was controversial because it took place during an event to hand over duties last Thursday and those who voted for it were 16 members of the new exco of president Datuk Joshua Peter Tan.

This prompted Tan to call for a press conference on Wednesday to clear the air and reveal the results of investigations into the alleged phantom voters.

“There will be no cover up. The report will be open to all for scrutiny. We are quite certain that there are no phantom voters in the registry,” he said.

Tan labelled the meeting during which the no-confidence votes was tabled as illegal.

“It was an illegal sitting of past and present exco members which took place after the handover ceremony and before the new exco meeting. It is not provided for in the association’s constitution,” he said.

Tan said according to the constitution, any vote must amount to two-thirds of the 33 members of the exco.

On complaints that he had ignored requests by some current exco members to discuss issues during the hand-over ceremony, Tan said it was to be discussed during the exco meeting scheduled for later that day.

“We could not discuss it in the morning as the outgoing exco members were there and they had no locus standi,” he added.

Immediate past-president Ngiam Foon said the 16 exco members formed a majority out of the 24 current exco members present during the handover ceremony.

When contacted, each of the 16 members said they were from the current exco line up and they had all agreed to support the motion of no-confidence.

Kedah chapter chairman Ahmad Pishol Ishak pointed out that members respected the chair and was ready to work with him.

Federal Territory representative Ramchand D. said Tan ignored the fact that the minutes of the last exco meeting held on May 30 had to be discussed during last week’s handover.

“This is simply to ensure continuity,” he said.

Vice-president for ticketing K. Thangavelu said while he agreed with Tan in certain areas, he regretted the way the new president had conducted last week’s meeting.

“The other exco members just wanted to go through the items they wanted to be included in the agenda,” he said.

Ngiam claimed that Tan could not have legally adjourned the meeting and left the room with seven of his exco members.




Source : STAR
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