An early casualty in the seemingly bitter in-fighting within Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS) is the "instant dismissal" of the party's executive secretary Susan Ngau from her post "for releasing party files without authority" to third parties.

PBDS supreme council member Sidi Munan today confirmed reports that Ms Ngau, daughter of a retired senior administrative officer of the government Stewart Ngau Ding, was given 24 hours to leave her job after discovery of the incident a few days ago.

According to reports, after the missing files were discovered she was interrogated by both party deputy president Daniel Tajem and secretary-general Stanley Ajang and admitted that she had taken the files out and handed them over to certain persons without the party's authority.

The original files were eventually returned to party headquarters.

PBDS has now appointed a former senior Shell Malaysia executive Henry Lian, who like Ms Ngau is also an Orang Ulu, as its new executive secretary.

Number of branches

A point of contention brewing openly now between the two rival factions within the party is the actual number of registered branches.

Appointed supreme council member Dublin Unting, who is also an assistant minister of tourism and alinged to the faction supporting party information chief Dr James Jemut Masing for the president's post and party vice president Sng Chee Hua for the deputy president's post, says there are o­nly 206 branches, based o­n the number recognised at the last party's triennial delegates conference in 2000.

However, according to a spokesman for the other faction supporting Tajem as candidate for president and party treasurer-general and member of parliament for Julau Joseph Sallang Gandum for deputy president, the actual number is 268.

The number includes 48 branches that for o­ne reason or another were excluded from the voting process in the last TDC, they say.

According to a PBDS leader Paul Kadang, the party's supreme council had already decided o­n this at its meeting in August last year.

The two factions are stepping up their campaign o­n the ground for support among branches vital in securing enough of delegate votes for victory at the coming TDC that can be held as early as September this year or the latest by February next year.

A campaign is also already underway in earnest to get party president Leo Moggie, who is also federal Minister of Energy,Telecommunications and Multimedia, to stay o­n as president for at least another year and for Tajem to remain as deputy president.

Tajem has said he will not go for the No 1 post if Moggie decides to stay o­n.

Masing all out

But Masing who has now teamed up with Sng, a former elected representative but still an influential party leader, seemed to have given the indication that he would go for the No 1 post "whatever the outcome." He is said to have the backing not o­nly from his own supporters within the party but also from some top state BN leaders.

Meanwhile, Tajem made a surprise appearance last night at a PBDS Youth gathering at a local hotel in Kuching. Among those present were Masing and his main supporters, including PBDS Youth leader Joseph Entulu, who is also assistant minister in the Chief Minister's Office, and Dublin.

One senior journalist told malaysiakini that Tajem had indicated o­n several occasions that he would not want to be president of "half a party."

This would seem to indicate that although his presence had come as a surprise, it is believed that his intention is to try and heal the rifts within the party.

On this, Sidi Munan, who is also a former PBDS executive secretary, said that Tajem would probably not agree to continue to remain in the second slot in the leadership hierarchy after all these years.

"There is a possibility that at the end of the day there will be no fight at all for the top posts in the

party," he added.

Meanwhile, at yesterday's PBDS special assembly attended by the chairmen, deputy chairmen and secretaries of 61 branches from several parts of Sri Aman, Sibu and Sarikei divisions, the state assemblyperson for Ngemah Gabriel Adit said PBDS must continue to be led by Dayaks because the bulk of its membership come from the Dayak community.

According to records made available to malaysiakini , PBDS has about 120,000 members, of which about 500 are non-Dayaks. Of the 500 non-Dayak members, about 200 are in Pelagus, the state constituency of Sng Chee Hua's son Larry, in central Sarawak.

Main aims of PBDS

Adit was explaining to some 250 people who attended the special assembly that later called for Moggie to stay as president for another term as to why PBDS must remain to be controlled and led by Dayaks.

He went into the party's history, starting with its leaders breaking away from the now-defunct Sarawak National Party (Snap) in the early 1980s that led to the formation of PBDS.

(Moggie,Tajem and several other top Dayak leaders left Snap and formed PBDS after failing to take over the leadership of Snap from James Wong Kim Min, after the former president Dunstan Endawie, a former Sarawak deputy chief minister and a former Malaysian envoy, stepped down and quit politics).

Adit's speech scored the need for the Dayaks not to lose sight of the main aims behind the formation of PBDS in the first place.

He also pointed out that the newly-formed Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party (SPDP), although a multi-racial party is controlled and led by Dayaks. All five top SPDP posts were held by Dayaks.