Dayak party a threat to security and public order???

The protem committee members of the yet-to-be-registered Malaysian Dayak Congress (MDC) will decide soon whether to make a fresh application to the Registrar of Societies (ROS), its protem information chief Joseph Tawie said Sunday.

He said, alternatively, party members, comprising former Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS) members who remained partyless, could join Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) or other political parties in the state.

"We (MDC) have received a number of invitations to join the opposition but we are still holding on as we have yet to decide on the next course of action," he told Caroline Jackson of Bernama in Kuching, Sarawak.

The Home Ministry, in a letter dated April 9 last year, rejected MDC's appeal to be registered as a political party on grounds that its registration could pose a threat to security and public order.

The protem committee members had appealed against the ROS' decision to the Home Minister in August 2006, after an application to register the MDC, submitted on May 6, 2004, was rejected on July 19, 2006.

Following the deregistration of PBDS on Oct 21, 2004, many of its 200,000 members opted to join its offshoot, the Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS), a state Barisan Nasional (BN) component party while "tens of thousands ex-PBDS members remained partyless,"

Tawie said.In the May 2006 state election, MDC candidates had to contest under the opposition Sarawak National Party (SNAP) tickets as its registration could not be approved on time.ROS, meanwhile, had advised the applicants to submit a fresh application if they were still interested to pursue the MDC registration.