With elections due in six days for Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS), the faction led by president Daniel Tajem has unilaterally decided to postpone it.

As expected, this has not gone down well with the rival faction led by presidential aspirant Dr James Masing ( left ).

He asked: "Do they have the authority to decide on that?"

Malaysiakini understands that several leaders aligned to the Tajem ( photo ) faction are in Kuala Lumpur to convince Barisan Nasional (BN) leaders on the need to re-schedule the elections and to obtain endorsement for the move.

The Masing faction's spokesperson, Dublin Unting, said today that "as far as we are concerned and unless informed otherwise by BN, we will go ahead with the triennial delegates conference (TDC) this weekend".

"We are already calling some 600 delegates from 206 branches throughout Sarawak to gather in Kuching by Friday," Unting said.

"We want to explain to them the developments within the party."

Asked how the faction proposed to respond if the BN technical committee (supervising the polls) should decide to postpone the TDC, Dublin said the reasons would be studied before the course of action is decided.

Delegates' list

Reliable sources said the Tajem faction's action could set off a new turn of events - either the delegates will go ahead this weekend and elect Masing as president and other office-bearers, or there could even be an announcement of a new party.

This would be similar to last year's events before the party was deregistered when the Registrar of Societies found that both factions had failed to follow election rules.

Local newspaper reports have suggested that the differences among leaders of the two factions have reached "an irreconcilable stage", in spite of efforts to bring them together.

A political science lecturer in Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Tajem faction's move to reschedule the TDC "does not seem to put the Tajem group in a good light".

"It could even be seen as going against the BN leadership," he added.

The BN technical committee at its meeting on July 15 in Kuala Lumpur had fixed Oct 9-10 as the dates for the long-delayed TDC and proposed the use of the same delegates' list as that of the TDC in 2000.

Yesterday, the Tajem faction met for two hours at party headquarters in Kuching before announcing the decision to postpone the TDC .

It said there had been no word from technical committee chairperson Radzi Sheikh Ahmad, who is also BN and UMNO secretary-general, since July 15.

As such, the Tajem faction said it would not be possible to hold a proper and legal party election this weekend, as scheduled.

The sticking point is over the delegates' list, which it wants to amend to remove names from 25 unregistered branches and to include delegates from 28 branches who were shut out from the previous TDC. It also wants to include delegates from 35 branches registered after 2000.

TONY THIEN is malaysiakini 's Sarawak-based stringer.