KUCHING: Members of the de-registered Sarawak National Party (SNAP) are anxious to know if Home Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi will entertain an appeal to quash the Registrar of Societies’ decision to de-register the party.
It is exactly a month today after the appeal letter was sent to Abdullah by former party president Datuk Amar James Wong Kim Min.
“We (ex-party members) are all waiting anxiously for a reply. There is no news yet,” said former party secretary-general Datuk Justine Jinggut when asked yesterday.
The appeal was made after Wong and Jinggut failed to obtain leave from the Kuala Lumpur High Court on Nov 29 to seek a judicial review to reverse the deregistration decision.
High Court Judge Abdul Hamid Said then told the plaintiffs that “you can appeal to the Home Minister and then come back to court.”
The 41-year-old party, a member of the Barisan Nasional, was deregistered after it failed to resolve a more than six-month-long leadership dispute between two groups headed respectively by Wong and Datuk William Mawan Ikom.
Mawan is now leading the newly formed Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party (SPDP), which has taken the place of SNAP in the state coalition.
The national Barisan meeting on Tuesday is expected to endorse the state coalition’s decision to admit SPDP.
Jinggut said the ex-SNAP members who wanted to revive the party would have to wait for the outcome of the appeal before deciding on the next course of action.
He said the SNAP headquarters at Jalan Rubber here was still operational with staff still being paid.
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