There has been a resurgence of hope in the Malaysian Dayak Congress (MDC) whose registration has been on the back burner in the Registrar of Societies (ROS) office since early this year.

Its proponents are now gearing up to field candidates under their party symbol for the state polls thanks to Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz, who also heads the parliamentary human rights and good governance caucus.

Yesterday, Nazri said the caucus supported MDC's application and would urge Home Minister Azmi Khalid to resolve the matter.

The minister added that it was a gross injustice to the Dayaks concerned for the authorities to sit on the application for so long.

Malaysiakini learnt that after the MDC's proponents wrote to various government leaders in Kuala Lumpur, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi had officially written to ROS Kaswuri Keman regarding the matter.

On Monday, when DAP Bandar Kuching MP Chong Chieng Jen raised the matter in Parliament, the Home Ministry attributed the delay to 'technical problems'.

Flimsy reasons

MDC information chief Joseph Tawie told malaysiakini today he understood that the state Barisan Nasional (BN) had objected to the registration on flimsy grounds.

It is said that one of the reasons for the objection was the use of the word Dayak, which is a collective term used since the colonial era to refer to a group of non-Muslim indigenous groups comprising the Iban, Bidayuh and Orang Ulu in Sarawak.

Some state BN politicians, including Dayak ministers, do not want the word to be used, but a majority of the Dayaks are in favour of it.

Meanwhile, a MDC spokesperson said the party's pro tem committee, at a special briefing yesterday, revealed that 12 out of the 32 Dayak-majority seats has been listed as 'black' for the BN.

These are mainly the seats held by the Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party (SPDP) and Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS).

Winds of change

Meanwhile, Tawie claimed that after spending many months on the ground since the demise of Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak, and from whose ashes MDC was born, there were signs that the winds of change is blowing across the Dayak landscape in the face of growing frustrations over, among others, the native customary rights (NCR) land issue.

Even if the ROS approval does not come through, MDC's proponents will not let the issue rest. They have warned that the matter will be raised with United Nations secretary-general Kofi Anan, the Commonwealth secretary-general and Amnesty International regarding the treatment of minority communities.