In the era before 2008 when the cash-strapped DAP struggled to stay afloat, form branches and win supporters, Tee was that archetypal DAP middleman who could swing it for the party, get the dinner tickets sold, arrange the lion dance and bring in the crowd for DAP leaders like Lim Kit Siang to work.
After the success of Election 2008, which saw the opposition DAP transformed into a ruling party in Selangor and Penang, thousands who had once shied away from the DAP started knocking on the doors and demanded to be admitted.
In Selangor — from about 40 branches, the party expanded to over 200 today.
But with success also came fear — fear that one’s position in the party is under threat, even from your best friend and loyal political ally of two decades, as is the case between Tee and Liu.
Tee is unwilling to go into the story of how his once-balmy relationship with Liu had gone sour.
“I am reluctant because I am considering appealing my sacking. I don’t want to jeopardise my chances,” he told The Malaysian Insider in an interview. “DAP top leaders know my sacrifices and I am hoping justice would prevail.”
“I hope to clear my name because I have done nothing wrong,” he went on.
While Tee is cautious, his closest aides and friends are not. They are incensed at his sacking and are raring to open up against Liu and the “hidden hand” behind the crisis that has hit the Selangor DAP.
Tee had a long and illustrious career in the DAP, which he joined as a 26-year-old in 1984.
He became politicised after hearing top DAP leaders like former rising star Lee Lam Thye, Lim Kit Siang and the late P. Patto speak at political rallies in Klang, Port Klang and Pandamaran.
As a boy of nine, he heard Lee speak during the 1969 general election.
Some years later, after schooling and with a diploma in business studies, Tee listened to speeches by Lim and Patto at a by-election in Port Klang.
The very next day, he signed up as a member in the Pandamaran DAP branch.
From there he climbed up the party ladder, becoming branch chairman and was even temporarily the Selangor DAP chairman. He also contested twice in the Pandamaran state seat, only losing by about 400 votes in the 2004 general election.
The 2004 result was questioned because the voting was extended by two hours in some constituencies like Pandamaran.
Tee, with the DAP’s support, took the matter all the way to court — but eventually lost.
“It was financially draining. And when the 2008 general election came I decided to take a break,” Tee said. “That’s when I told the party to field Liu.”
“I told Liu, ‘just come with your suitcase and nomination form. I will do the rest,’” Tee said.
Sure enough, Tee worked tirelessly to get Liu elected in Election 2008 — and with victory, came rewards.
Liu was made an exco member and Tee, his special assistant with his own office next to Liu’s. Tee managed the newly-elected assemblyman’s constituency work and political liaison while Liu managed his local government portfolio for the state.
But over several months their relationship soured and the story gets blurred, with Liu’s supporters saying Tee exceeded his mandate and tried to undermine Liu’s political base.
“He suddenly got ambitious and wanted to contest in Pandamaran. He wanted Liu’s job. He liked the power,” Liu’s supporters now allege.
Tee’s supporters deny the charges, saying the Pandamaran seat was Tee’s for the asking. “He invited Liu, helped him win and worked for him as an exco member,” they said. “It is Liu who strayed from the DAP’s strict path, not Tee.”
“The people around Liu poisoned his mind against Tee and he felt threatened,’ they said.
The souring relationship took a turn for the worse after Wangsa Maju Wee Choo Keong, a former DAP leader and Bukit Bintang MP, alleged that gangsters were using a Selangor exco members’ office for their meetings.
At the same time Liu came under anonymous attack for allegedly issuing licences for massage parlours and other excesses, but it was his relationship with Tee which took the biggest hit after these allegations surfaced.
“Liu blamed Tee for the anonymous attacks and for allegedly feeding Wee [information] to raise the gangster issue,” said a DAP member knowledgeable of the matter.
Whatever the case, on November 18, 2009, Liu abruptly terminated Tee’s position as his special assistant, ordered him to vacate his office and returned all the files, ending their once-close relationship.
“While they seethed inside, for the public they put up a facade as friends,” the DAP member said. “Throughout 2010, their rivalry which has been simmering under the surface, intensified as the Selangor DAP elections neared.”
Tee, who is incumbent Klang division chairman, was due to defend his position at DAP elections starting in mid-August.
“With his extensive grassroots [support] in Klang, he is a sure winner,” the DAP member said.
He said Liu was backing another candidate to challenge Tee when the support letters controversy erupted with a July 26 story in The Star daily, of a rogue councillor giving support letters to get RM1 million in MPK contracts to 20 companies.
Tee denied the allegations at a press conference the next day along with top DAP leaders like Teresa Kok and others sitting beside him.
But subsequently, the party’s disciplinary committee came into the picture and summarily expelled Tee, setting off a major controversy with police and MACC investigations, and sparking turmoil in the Selangor DAP grassroots.
Tee is now either a hero or a culprit. Which, however, depends on the DAP faction that is giving the answer.
