THE man who "flamed" the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) organising committee may be joining the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP).
Yesterday, in an e-mail to The New Paper at 9.10pm, the SDP confirmed that it has received an application from Abdul Malik Mohammed Ghazali, 27, to join the party.
The New Paper had earlier contacted SDP via an e-mail address provided on the party's website.
When contacted, Malik, a project executive in a construction company, said that he had submitted the application in person at the SDP headquarters on Saturday.
But he told The New Paper that he has not received a reply from SDP about whether his application is successful.
Explaining why he decided to apply for membership, Malik said: "Their views are much aligned with mine in certain areas."
While he had toyed with the idea of joining the SDP for some time, one of the triggers for this decision was when he was hauled up by the police over his complaints about the handling of the YOG, he added.
But Malik was insistent that his complaints about the handling of the YOG were not politically motivated.
He said: "Those comments were mine and mine alone...
"The incident had nothing to do with the SDP at all. They contacted me only after that incident."
The incident he was referring to was a Facebook posting on Aug 18: "It is time to burn Vivian Balakrishnan and the PAP! Rally together and vote them out!"
Malik was arrested last Tuesday.
His admission about applying to join the SDP is an about-turn from his earlier comments to The New Paper in which he described himself as an "independent operator" with no political affiliations.
We had asked Malik about whether he had any links to the SDP, after pictures of him and members of the Young Democrats, the youth wing of the SDP, were posted on the party's website last week.
In reply, he said that although he changed his Facebook name late last week to Malik "Notvotingpap", he was still "shopping around" for a political party to join.
Malik told us that he had a meeting with the Young Democrats in Sembawang last week after he was invited by one of them through his Facebook account.
He said that during the two-hour meeting, he spoke to Dr Chee Soon Juan, the secretary-general of the party, his sister, Ms Chee Siok Chin, a member of the central executive committee, and other members of the party.
He said that Dr Chee went up to him to him and said, "Keep it up, this is your right."
Separately, Malik said he had apologised to Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports for the comments made over the YOG.
But it was a qualified apology.
Describing his e-mail to Dr Balakrishnan, with the subject, From one gentleman to another, Malik said: "I was apologising to the Minister if I had caused him any discomfort.
"I understand that an MP was literally burnt before. I wanted to clarify that my use of the word 'burn' was figurative.
"I'm not apologising for saying what I did, but for the miscommunication."
A screen capture of the e-mail was posted on Malik's Facebook account.
He said: "I didn't say anything slanderous; there were no personal attacks. The only reason the Minister's name was there was because, being the Minister, he was in charge."
While he acknowledges that Singapore has received positive feedback for the YOG, Malik insists that his comments are still valid.
In his Facebook postings, he had hit out at the tripling of the original estimated $104-million budget for the YOG.
Malik was also unhappy about the food poisoning incident that had affected some Games volunteers.
Earlier, we reported that the Facebook group "I hate the YOG organising committee" had come under fire from YOG supporters with one of them calling members in the group "cowards" for hiding behind the anonymity of the Internet.
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