Court bid to stop Masing from calling party polls
Malaysiakini.com
Nov 25, 2006
Tony Thien

Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) vice-president Jimmy Donald went to court yesterday to try and stop party president Dr James Masing faction from holding party elections in Sibu on Dec 2.

Jimmy, also Sri Aman MP and aligned to deputy president Sng Chee Hua faction, through his lawyer Lim Eng Choo applied before Kuching High Court Registrar Gabriel Gumis for a writ of summons to ask Masing to appear in court on Nov 28.

The application was granted. It is learnt that process servers are still trying to serve the writ on Masing who is attending the state legislative assembly sitting.

A spokesperson for the Sng group said the party would be producing all official correspondence before the court during the hearing of the application to show why the triennial delegates conference (TDC) being called by the Masing faction should not proceed.

Earlier, they had called on the Masing faction to drop the TDC, claiming it is illegal and would be a recipe for the two-year-old party's de-registration.

The Masing faction had told malaysiakini that the TDC would go ahead "unless someone can give justifiable and valid reasons why it should not."

Worried faction

The Sng faction is clearly worried that if the Masing faction goes ahead with the party elections by leaving out a lot of qualified branches and delegates, it could land the party into hot soup - possibly de-registration - in the same way the now defunct Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS) was de-registered.

Masing has chosen to ignore certain provisions of the party constitution, claimed his rivals, and that alone could land the party in serious trouble with the Registrar of Societies.

But he has been saying that he has the support of the majority of the party's elected representatives, implying in effect that the only solution to the PRS leadership crisis is through a political solution.

If the process servers could manage to serve the writ of appearance on Masing within the next one or two days, Masing will have no choice but to appear in court and defends his decision to go ahead with the TDC.

The court will decide from there.
    
Copyright © 1999-2006 Mkini Dotcom Sdn Bhd