KUALA LUMPUR, June 4 — DAP’s Jelutong MP RSN Rayer has denied claims made by Penang PAS chief Muhammad Fauzi Yusoff’s claim that the former was late to offer assistance to fire victims in his constituency.

Rayer said Muhammad had also accused him of arriving late at the site and had told constituents that their vote did not matter to DAP.

"The Penang PAS commissioner said I arrived at the site after him (after Friday prayers), that is not true.

"In fact, our assemblyman Lim Siew Khim arrived at the site at 1.30am, and I arrived at 9am. What PAS said is not true,” Rayer said in a press conference today.

In a video he showed, Rayer said Fauzi was trying to portray him and Lim for neglecting the area since it was populated by Malay and ethnic Indians, and that he had never gone to the ground.

"He accused me of scolding the constituents for seeking help from PAS, and said that the constituents had told me in return that they will not vote for us, and even said I apparently said even if Indians and Malay didn’t vote for us it didn’t matter.

"This is a very serious matter and incites racial sentiments and I don’t want this to happen again, as the general public knows that all races in Penang live in harmony,” Rayer said.

He added that the DAP leadership in Penang has never neglected or looked at ethnicity when offering aid to the public, and accused PAS of smear campaign ahead of the state election.

"I have lodged a police report and I have given a warning to the PAS commissioner so that he will repeat this again and I will take legal action, I will file a defamation suit against the PAS commissioner.

"And the three houses that were affected are not Indians or Malays but Chinese,” Rayer said.

Rayer said his office has since identified those who were affected in the fire and have offered assistance as each MP has an allocation for such situations.

"One of the victims of the fire is here and they know that we have gone to see them, you can hear me very clearly in the video, any damages make an estimate of damage cost we will offer aid.

"If the house needs repairs we will help with repair works. I am very disappointed and angry that this happened, as a people’s representative, neither have I nor other DAP reps said such things,” he added.

* A previous edition of the story contained an error which has since been corrected.