PETALING JAYA, April 5 — Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia’s (PPBM) GE14 candidates will still contest despite the Registrar of Societies’ (RoS) temporary suspension of the party, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said tonight.
Dr Mahathir said PPBM will contest in GE14 even if they had to do so individually.
“As far as we are concerned, Pribumi is still a functional party until it has permanently been delisted by the RoS.
“If that ultimately happens, we will still contest. Nothing is going to stop any of our candidates from contesting in the elections. Even if we have to do so individually, we will contest,” he said.
Speaking at the party’s headquarters at the Amcorp Trade Centre here, the former prime minister also disputed the legality of the letter handed to his party by the RoS, saying it went against legal principles.
Dr Mahathir said there was no legal obstacle to members of the party from contesting in the elections “even if the party were to be declared illegal”.
“There is no way they can stop us from contesting. They can declare our party to be illegal or whatever but they cannot declare us illegals. We are legal citizens of this country with the right to contest in the elections.”
RoS director-general Surayati Ibrahim had earlier today said PPBM had failed to fulfill RoS’ February 28 notice requesting for documents and details regarding the party which was then served with the temporary disbandment notice under Section 14 of the Societies Act 1966 at 12.30pm on Thursday (April 5).
Dr Mahathir disputed the legitimacy of the letter, pointing out what he described as inconsistencies with its delivery, the date it went into effect and the language used in it saying it went against legal principles.
“According to the law you have to hand the notice to the persons concerned, not to somebody else. This was not sent to the person the letter was addressed to.
“The address of the letter is in Damansara but they came to this place, and they did not hand it over to the secretary and copies were not sent to other officers of the party,” he said.
He said the notice listed items which the RoS said have not been answered.
“For example RoS has been told that there were no branches, therefore there were no meetings at the branch level and no meeting minutes but they still keep asking for these meeting minutes even though we have explained this to them.
“We informed them that we are a new party. You cannot set up a new party immediately and have branches, divisions, and headquarters but they are ignoring our explanation,” he said.
Dr Mahathir also said he had only received a copy of the letter in a text from his staff and had not been served with any copy of the letter and said the letter contained “funny language”.
“We also dispute the terms used...it was written in a very funny language that we Malays cannot understand. It says: ‘dengan ini diperintahkan bagi sementara supaya pendaftaran pertubuhan yang namanya tersebut diatas dibubarkan’. (With this it is temporarily ordered that the registration of the above named organisation be delisted)
“It should be ‘dibatalkan’, which is cancelled or rescinded not ‘dibubarkan sementara’, so we are very confused about that. This creates a confusing impression and we assume this means that we can still function while we make an appeal,” he said.
Dr Mahathir also said the legal period for responding was also disputable as the letter, issued on February 28 was only received by the party on March 7.
“It is the date of service that begins the period for the recipient to make a reply.
“Ros said they gave us 30 days...therefore to us that means we have till April 6. And yet RoS has made an assumption that we have not replied,” he explained.
He said that the party still had the option of appealing to the Home Ministry and failing that would turn to the courts in order to challenge the notice from RoS.
“We will appeal to the Home Minister (Datuk Seri) Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and if the minister says no we will appeal to a court of law so that the decision is made according to a court of law and not on the whims of the minister.”
