Two ex-Sarawak National Party (Snap) top leaders James Wong Kim Min and Justine Jinggut will backtrack and now turn to the home minister first to try and reverse the Registrar of Societies' (ROS) decision to de-register the party.

According to Justine, secretary-general of Sarawak's third oldest-established party which the ROS de-registered on Nov 4, the duo will submit an appeal letter to Home Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on Monday (Dec 2).

"If the minister's decision is not favourable, it is most likely that we will go to the court to appeal against it," he added.

Ex-Snap office-bearers aligned to Wong, 80, who has said he will quit whatever is the court's eventual decision, met last night at the home of former Snap deputy secretary-general Edmund Stanley Jugol after the Kuala Lumpur High Court's decision yesterday to throw Wong and Justine's application for a certiorari order against the ROS' decision.

High Court judge Abdul Hamid Said, in rejecting their application to quash the ROS' decision, said there were two avenues open to them to appeal to the home minister and to go to the court in the event the minister's decision is not in their favour.

Dispute the key

Basically, the court held the view that if there was a dispute among office-bearers in the party and the ROS had acted to make an order like he did, the office-bearers could go and appeal to the minister first.

At a closed-door meeting of some 150 representatives from 62 former divisions of Snap throughout Sarawak after the ROS made the decision to de-register the party, decided that the office-bearers should go straight for a judicial review.

Reason: The home minister in an earlier public statement had said he concurred with the decision of the ROS who had consulted the Attorney-General's Office.

Meanwhile, leaders of the newly-registered Sarawak Progress Democratic Party (SPDP), led by former Snap vice president William Mawan, who is also state minister of environment and public health, said they were no longer interested in whatever outcome coming out of any appeal by the Wong group.

As far as they are concerned, they said, Snap is as good as dead, and that SPDP has already been accepted by the state Barisan Nasional and that it will be a matter of time for its membership to be endorsed at the federal level.

Spanners in the works

Malaysiakini understands that some former Snap leaders aligned to Wong are attempting to prevent a total consensus being reached which is necessary for the admission of a new party into the BN membership."They are talking to certain leaders in a BN party in Sabah to try and throw some spanners in the works."

But political observers say it is unlikely that any federal BN component party would digress or abstain or oppose any move to bring SPDP into the BN "as the Prime Minister and BN chief Dr Mahathir Mohamad and his deputy Abdullah Badawi are in favour of the new party being admitted into the BN fold."

Meanwhile, former Snap staff, reportedly demoralised at news of the party's demise, are preparing for the worst. It is understood that they are remaining in their positions at the former party's headquarters for the time being until the whole matter is disposed of till the end through the court.

Snap reportedly had 130,000 members throughout Sarawak when the ROS announced its de-registration on Nov 5.

TONY THIEN is malaysiakini correspondent in Kuching, Sarawak.