The widely-expected confrontation between Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS) president Leo Moggie and his elected officials did not happen at the party's decision-making body meeting in Miri, Sarawak last month.

Instead, the Oct 21 meeting turned out to be a meek and tame affair and lasted for only 90 minutes without even the subject that had hogged the headlines for the past several weeks in local and national media being discussed at all.

Why? After all, did all indications prior to that not point strongly to a likely showdown after Moggie named several key appointments, as the party president's right under the constitution, without as much as some consultation with his deputy president Daniel Tajem and other elected officials?

At the heart of the whole issue was the defeat of candidates closely linked to Dr James Masing Jemut, the newly-appointed Sarawak Social Development and Urbanisation Affairs minister, who failed to unseat Tajem at the party's triennial delegates conference held earlier in August in Kuching.

Masing who was earlier the senior vice president went for broke in a campaign that had never been as personal and acrimonious at any time in the party's 17 years of existence.

Immediately after the defeat of Masing and his group, including Dublin Unting, an assistant minister and former secretary-general, the victors let words out before Moggie had even time to sit down and think who they wanted to be appointed to fill the various key posts of secretary-general, treasurer-general and publicity chief and seven other ordinary supreme council posts.

When Moggie eventually went ahead and announced the appointments, Tajem and his group were shocked and angry and during a hurriedly called emergency meeting they passed a motion rejecting their president's choices. Moggie had been informed of the meeting but chose to stay away. They had wanted to get him to explain the rationale behind his decision.

Moggie compounded the problems by inviting the appointed officials to meet him either in Kuala Lumpur or Kota Kinabalu on certain dates to take their oath of office. When the media, quoting the newly-appointed secretary-general Stanley Ajang, published the news, Tajem's group was even more infuriated, and talk was it was all heading for a serious confrontation or even showdown at the scheduled Oct 21 meeting of the party's highest decision-making body in Miri.

Apology given

But what had finally averted all this?

Unknown to many, Moggie flew in early to Miri on Friday, the day before the meeting, and met in the evening "informally" with Tajem and his group over dinner. At the meeting, he first explained his decision and, according to insiders, apologised to them if he had acted in what seemed to them to be an "authoritarian manner".

According to insiders, Moggie had told them it was just as difficult for him to decide because everyone that had been recommended for the key party posts was equally good. But he explained that the party could not afford to lose good people, to be split, especially as state elections could be held very soon, and that it would not just be the party that would stand to lose but also the Dayak community if differences within the party were not set aside soon.

One senior party leader even suggested that the whole crisis could have been engineered by outsiders, but stopped short of pointing any finger at anyone. "It is obvious if the party is weakened it would benefit others," he said.

Moggie said the party had little choice but to close ranks by putting aside the differences. He added that it was important to give some semblance of a united front and to stop the party from continuing to become a laughing stock in the eyes of the public. According to inside sources, Tajem also spoke, reflecting his own group's views, and said all along they always had faith, confidence and trust in Moggie as party leader and would want him to continue to lead.

Earlier, when temperatures were still high among Tajem's group, there had even been a suggestion that if Moggie would not back off or come down a little from his original list there could be a move to censure him which would be tantamount to a vote of no confidence in his leadership. Obviously, Moggie would take this and, according to reports, had threatened to resign if his choices were not agreed to.

As it turned out, when the party's supreme council met the following day, "it all proceeded smoothly", as one elected official described it, with a normal meeting agenda being discussed to by all. Reporters waiting outside the hall were surprised at the short meeting, and at the smiling faces of party leaders when they emerged together. There were handshakes. For the benefit of the media, Tajem, the victor, and Masing, the loser, in the recent party leaders embraced each other - their first face-to-face meeting since then.

At a press conference, Moggie said the party's internal crisis had been resolved after the elected officials accepted his explanation on the new appointments. He added that everyone had agreed to set aside differences and bury the hatchet "for the sake of party unity".

What, however, Moggie did not tell the reporters was he had in fact said "sorry" to Tajem and his group if it seemed he had ignored them in the first place before his announcement of the list of appointed officials.

"All's well ends well", is how one party stalwart described the outcome of the crucial Oct 21 meeting. But those in the know would not hesitate to say that the party had in fact come close to the brink of breaking up. What had saved it is not just Moggie's explanation and subtle apology to a still angry group of elected party officials, led by his deputy.

Neutral men

Most of the party's members of parliament and state assemblymen were either in Masing's group or as neutral men, including Belaga state assemblyman Stanley Ajang and Julau member of parliament Joseph Salang, the treasurer-general.

Even some of the newer members of Tajem's group were beginning to question the wisdom of some of Tajem's actions in handling the internal crisis issues. They had been asking whether he was leading the party to certain destruction.

"I have joined the party to strengthen it, not to see it weakened," said a lawyer who was one of the elected officials, suggesting there would be no point in supporting a party that was going down the drain.

Talk was that Moggie, the Energy, Post and Multimedia Communications minister, is the one in the party that always holds the trump card. According to observers, because of his close ties to the Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud and Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Moggie will be the one to call the shots when it comes to deciding on who would eventually be able to stand on BN ticket in the coming state elections.

Some party leaders still remember even when corporate leader Sng Chee Hua's name was included in the party's list of nominations to stand in the last parliamentary elections, it was subsequently dropped by the Barisan Nasional's top leadership. Joseph Salang, a professional and successful Iban businessman, was a last-minute substitute.

"You antagonise him(Moggie) to your own peril," is how one of the appointed officials put it. In other words, the party's supreme council may pick the names but this is still subject to approval by the top Barisan Nasional leadership in Kuching and Kuala Lumpur.

There is little secret about the close affinity between the chief minister and Masing, who is seen both as an Iban intellectual and politician. In a recent cabinet reshuffle, Taib moved Masing from tourism to social development and urbanisation affairs, considered an important portfolio in the light of growing problems associated with rural to urban drift.

"Quite apart from the party's future at stake, the Tajem's group is well aware who between him and Moggie has the joker up the sleeve," according to observers. "In some things, you just cannot win. He (Tajem) probably saw this in the end."

Observers say what had transpired at the Oct 21 meeting was a consensus to set aside whatever differences for the time being, hoping that time would heal. "Most of them should be able to do that," they add. "Some may be able to forgive but maybe not forget."

The question now is with so many aspirants and the limited number of seats allocated to the party (PBDS has seven assemblymen and six members of parliament), will Moggie be able to bring in new ones? How many will he be able to drop?

Indications are at least one is likely to go, that is state assemblyman Mong Dagang from Sri Aman Division. He lost the party elections and was not appointed to the supreme council. Is this Moggie's way of bringing Tajem, a former deputy chief minister and former Malaysian high commissioner to New Zealand, back into active politics?

"If I am offered, I'll have to think about it," was what Tajem told malaysiakini recently. Speculation is that after the end of his New Zealand stint, Tajem, at 64, is still active ,and Moggie is probably thinking of something for him to keep him fully occupied and busy again.

Peace-making overtures

Both Moggie and Tajem are founder leaders of PBDS, a splinter group from the Sarawak National Party (Snap). "People always underestimate the strong bond between the two men," said an observer.

Almost a week to the peace-making overtures in Miri, Tajem surprised by publicly announcing that a motion (to reject Moggie's appointments) adopted at an emergency meeting on Oct 10 still stands. This was headline news item in most Chinese newspapers.

According to an elected surpreme council, a lawyer who asked not to be identified, this is a technical issue because at the last supreme council meeting in Miri chaired by Moggie, the motion was never discussed "as everyone was trying to be nice to everyone at that meeting".

The motion would have to be tabled at the next meeting in November and a formal decision taken to strike it down if that is going to be the decision, he added.

TONY THIEN is a freelance writer based in Kuching.