‘Illegal to promote BN clubs’

by Churchill Edward. Posted on February 6, 2012, Monday

KUCHING: Barisan Nasional (BN) clubs, set up by sacked office bearers of SPDP, cannot promote their cause nor hold membership drive unless and until they (BN clubs) are registered.

Deputy Speaker of the Dewan Rakyat Datuk Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, who is a lawyer by training, said doing these would infringe laws related to societies.

However, there is nothing in the law to say that people, including former members of SPDP, cannot form associations or clubs, he said, when asked to share his views on this issue.

“If I remember my law correctly, they can only hold membership drive and promote their cause after the club is registered.”

The BN cubs are the work of five former SPDP members, whose moniker is ‘SPDP Five’, who were sacked recently for gross insubordination. Shown the door were Mas Gading MP Datuk Dr Tiki Lafe and assemblymen Datuk Peter Nansian Nguise (Tasik Biru), Datuk Sylvester Entri Muran (Marudi), Rosey Yunus (Bekenu) and Paulus Palu Gumbang (Batu Danau).

Last month, they held a MoU signing event in Bau with several community leaders, apparently to garner support there.

Wan Junaidi, who is also Santubong MP, said: “Article 10 (1) (c) of the (Malaysian) Constitution provides the right for citizens of this country to an association and subject only to the provision of Article 10 (2) (c) that governs infringement of security, public order and morality.”

He said he believed politics could become ‘the art of the possible’ if stakeholders legitimised their efforts.

“There are many things in politics that could legitimise efforts (to form clubs), for instance, voices of the people. The law has a certain amount of certainty, but there are many aspects of what is right and proper in politics.”

Recently, political analyst Dr Jeniri Amir said the formation of BN clubs to accommodate disgruntled members of BN component parties would set a bad precedent for the ruling coalition.

If the BN clubs are allowed to spawn, its prominence would slowly erode the relevance of BN political parties and also the power-sharing concept which the BN had been pratising all this while, said Jeniri, who is also a local university lecturer.

Thus far, Nansian and Entrie have made the unprecedented move of forming BN clubs in their respective constituencies, and it is understood that they were contemplating getting it registered by the Registrar of Societies (ROS).

Hardcore ground spokesman for SPDP, Stewart Aying, who is also SPDP Lambir chief, said recently that the sacked members were trying to hang on to BN for political survival, to secure the right to continue disbursing BN minor rural project (MRP) fund, and to maintain their assistant ministerial posts.

Aying said BN, at the moment, did not want to rock their own boat simply by announcing that these independent incumbents (in Mas Gading and Tasik Biru) were outside BN, explaining that if the BN announced that the sacked incumbents were outside BN, then the coalition would technically have lost several representatives to the opposition.