A prospective candidate for Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak's (PBDS) top post Dr James Masing has

ruled out any prospect for a compromise within the party in finding a successor to incumbent president Leo Moggie ( photo ).

He indicated at a press conference in Kuching today o­n his return from overseas that the question of arriving at a consensus in order to resolve the leadership issue could o­nly be decided by party branches and not the supreme council.

Masing, who is also the party information chief and state minister of social development and urbanisation,

was asked to comment o­n Moggie's recent comments that he (Moggie) preferred the consensus way of resolving the leadership issue.

He has already announced he is bidding for the top post as Moggie's successor at the forthcoming triennial delegates conference (TDC), likely to be held the earliest by September this year or the latest February next year. His running-mate for the deputy presidency is Sng Chee Hua, o­ne of the party's

five vice presidents.

Their rival faction want Moggie, the Minister of Energy, Communication and Multimedia, to continue

leading the party or, if Moggie declines, deputy president Daniel Tajem and treasurer-general and Julau member of parliament Joseph Salang Gandum, for president and deputy president respectively.

A consensus of sort

According to Masing, the support that he had already obtained from the 163 branches represented a consensus of sort already at the branch level. The rival faction, however, says the actual number of party branches that could send delegates and vote at the forthcoming TDC is much higher - around 268 -- based o­n the supreme council's decision o­n August 24, 2002.

However, by insisting that o­nly 206 branches could send delegates to the TDC, Masing is in fact saying that since he has already obtained the support from 163 branches, anyone else wanting to stand for the president's post would not have the minimum required number of nominations (30 per cent) in order to qualify to contest.

Masing told the press conference that his faction would pass up the list of 163 branches that had already endorsed the Masing-Sng alliance to the party headquarters "within the next few days."

But, according to observers, it is unlikely that this will make any difference to the rival faction who say that the status of many of the branches that the Masing-Sng alliance claim have endorsed them has yet to be verified.

Masing's arrival statement would seem to suggest that any peaceful overtures o­n the part of some well-meaning members of his group to reach some form of a compromise in order to avoid worsening the internal party crisis appear to have been scuttled.

Another breakaway party?

The question some political commentators and observers are already asking is what could possibly happen if the verified list by party headquarters, which is controlled by the group aligned to the Tajem-Salang alliance, including party secretary-general Stanley Ajang, is proved unacceptable to the Masing group.

Will they go to the court and challenge the verification exercise? Or will they continue to frustrate the efforts of some well-intentioned behind-the-scene players to find an amicable solution to the party problem and eventually find their positions within the party so untenable that they would all resign en masse and form a new party?

One political commentator said:" If all this is not resolved, and each is adamant about getting its own

way, we may see the birth of a 'grandchild' of the now-defunct Sarawak National Party (Snap).

PBDS was formed in the early 1980s by a breakaway group from Snap at the height of a leadership crisis. The Masing group comprises nine of the party's 14 elected representatives.