A surprise at crisis-ridden Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS) supreme council meeting this morning was the presence of two supporters of former information chief Dr James Masing.

Sng Chee Hua, one of the party's three elected vice presidents, and Richard Will, the Miri division chairperson and elected SC member, turned up at the meeting, the first chaired by new president Daniel Tajem at 10.30am.

The meeting was originally scheduled at 2pm and reporters were only informed early morning of the change. No reasons were given.

Both Sng and Richard are nine of the SC members who are aligned to Masing, the state social development and urbanisation minister and Tajem's main rival for the president's post.

Resolutions passed

All 32 members, including the newly-appointed members of the SC, had been notified of the date of today's SC meeting.

Tajem, his supporters and newsmen were surprised when the duo turned up for the meeting, especially after their group had declared that they no longer recognise the supreme council with its nine newly-appointed members.

Sng and Richard quickly made their exit after the SC meeting was over, and did not stop to speak to the battery of reporters waiting outside the conference room.

Malaysiakini was later told that the duo had also gone along with several of the resolutions, including one thanking the immediate past president Leo Moggie for his services to the party, that the SC passed unanimously.

Another resolution also thanked Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in retaining Moggie as a member of the federal cabinet "as long as he is eligible to be appointed."

New committee

As expected, the SC re-constituted the composition of the credentials committee after the resignation of its members, by re-appointing veteran party leader Dr Jawie Masing as chairperson and appointing two new faces, Frank Apau and Paul Kong Pak Nam, as members.

The committee now has three members instead of five as previously, and the party's secretary-general Stanley Ajang, who is also the state assemblyperson for Belaga, is the new committee secretary.

Previously, apart from Dr Jawie Masing, the other members were lawyer Clement Eddy, businessman Patrick Sibat, former senior bank officer Terence Temenggong and Moggie's political secretary Aaron Dagang. The secretary was businessman Henry Upang.

According to Ajang, notice of the first meeting will be sent out tomorrow and the committee is expected to get down to work next week to look at the eligibility of branches to attend and vote at next month's TDC.

Tajem told reporters more than two-thirds of some 250 branches on party headquarters record and already sent to the Registrar of Societies had been registered for the purpose of the July 26-27 TDC.

"This is still an on-going exercise," added Ajang. "They are coming back from the ROS in instalments." The list will then be passed on to the credentials committee which, according to Tajem, has now been given very clear rules and guidelines to carry out their work.

It is now expected to finish its work within a week, after which nomination forms will be sent out to branches for the nomination of candidates.

Tajem will be vying for the president's post and Salang for the deputy president's post.

If the Masing-Sng faction go ahead and hold their own meetings, electing a separate supreme council before calling for an extraordinary delegates conference and finally a triennial delegates conference, then it is most likely that Masing and Sng will be easily returned as president and deputy president.

Sng queried

PBDS vice president Peter Runin, who is aligned to the Tajem-Salang faction, told reporters that during the SC meeting this morning he had queried Sng about a report in The Malaysian Today that the Masing-Sng faction was going to hold their own TDC.

To this, according Runin, Sng replied in Iban: "Keterubah manok mengkokok ukai semistinya tawas."("The first cock crow does not mean the break of dawn").

According to Runin, Sng also said:"Don't believe what newspapers say."

One SC member who asked not to be quoted said he was surprised that Sng along with Richard had turned up at the meeting. "Maybe he thinks he is up against a brick wall and as a businessman knows he has to do something."

But most of Tajem supporters believed Sng's decision to attend the meeting was merely to listen to what was going on, even though Masing had already declared they do not recognise the supreme council and are going to form their own on Monday in Miri.

Asked to comment on Masing's statement, published widely in local papers today, that Moggie might have been duped into resigning, Tajem told reporters: "He (Moggie) is a seasoned politician. He is a man of high calibre."

"I don't think anybody can dupe Moggie into doing something that he doesn't want to. He is a constitutional scholar. He is a man of high intellect," the new president said.

"Even the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister had acknowledged that he(Moggie) had resigned on his own accord," Tajem added.