Former Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS) president Leo Moggie's description of Dr James Masing ( right ) as 'paranoid' for wanting nothing less than the presidency which resulted in a bitter split within the party was merely stating the obvious, said the party youth wing today.

"Moggie is very diplomatic by nature and no doubt only after some painful hesitancy did he decided to strike the nail on its head," said party Youth publicity chief Leighton Manjah in a press statement.

He was referring to a statement by Richard Wil, a vice-president aligned to the Masing camp, who had accused Moggie of being a 'master liar' for saying that it was Masing who had pulled out of a leadership succession plan, dubbed the Miri formula, in April last year.

Under the plan, the Masing group had agreed to rival leader Daniel Tajem as president and Masing as the deputy.

No confidence vote

At his group's political gathering at a Kanowit longhouse last weekend, Tajem, who was returned unopposed as president by his own faction in the July triennial delegates conference this year, did not deny there was such a proposal.

But he added that he could not go along with that because one of the party's leaders, Sng Chee Hua - who is aligned to Masing - had proposed at the same time a vote of no confidence if Moggie refused to step down as president.

Manjah in his statement today said: "PBDS' present predicament is attributable in the final analysis to a single telling factor, that is, Masing's unquenchable and single-minded thirst for the party's presidency."

He added: "Except for those in the Masing-Sng group, Leo Moggie is held in very high esteem and adored with reverence by the rest of PBDS so much so that he was conferred with unanimity the title president emeritus at the recent PBDS TDC.

"His two decades of unblemished tenure as PBDS president, brought only to a halt by his own desire to retire, will probably be a record unsurpassed by anybody ever.

"His ministerial performance is a pride to the community and he deserves nothing less than applause and ovation."

Fatal error

Manjah said that none in the Masing-Sng faction is presently even a supreme council member of the party, whether nominated or otherwise. "Who are they to pass any unsavoury remark against so a honourable man?"

The Youth publicity chief also described as "typically characteristic of the Masing-Sng syndrome that they say one thing but do exactly the opposite".

He was referring to the group's persistent denial that they were planning a TDC of their own up to the time when it was held in Bintulu on July 24, in which Masing and Sng were elected leaders of a rival PBDS.

"If they love the party as they profess to, they must denounce the illegality of the Bintulu TDC, submit their fatal error - whether committed advertently or inadvertently - in submitting branches annual returns by bypassing the office of the secretary-general, accept the results of the Santubong TDC, recognise the legally elected officials led by Daniel Tajem and cloth themselves in humility to work out a compromise to get the party on its fast track as one united whole."

Referring to yesterday's statement by the Masing-Sng faction's information chief Dublin Unting, Manjah hoped that they would keep to their words of not forming a new political party if the present party was not de-registered by the Registrar of Societies.

"But there are firm indications that they are bent on forming a new party for reasons best known to themselves," he added.