BINTULU: Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) Bintulu branch supports having multiracial branch committees.
The branch committee is the highest authority and main decision-making body of each branch.
“Let this transformation of SUPP be to practise 1Malaysia and to make it a reality, not just a lip service,” said SUPP Bintulu chairman Henry Ling.
He was commenting on the branch’s election committee, which has received 56 nomination forms from members eyeing 45 posts.
Out of the 56 candidates, 44 are Chinese, seven Iban, two Melanau, one Bidayuh, one Kedayan and one Kenyah.
In the past, he said, only one Bumiputera member sat on the branch committee as Bumiputera chief.
“The undisputed fact is that more than half of our members in Bintulu are Bumi and among the voters in the election, half of them are Bumi too.
“Once more Bumi representatives are in the branch committee, then there is no need for a Bumi chief as we are all on board to tackle problems at the same time, rather than waiting for a report from the Bumi chief on matters of the Bumi section,” said Ling.
Under the party’s constitution, he pointed out, at least 43 positions must be open for contest and no reservations should be allowed except for a representative each for the youth and women’s wings.
Other direct appointments, he said, are “unauthorised and undemocratic reservations; it is unlawful and it is not done in accordance with the party constitution if this is to happen”.
Ling added that on Oct 4 this year, he met with a Registrar of Societies (RoS) officer on possible problems encountered by SUPP for the party election and requested to write an official report if there are any irregularities.
“I hope all would uphold the true spirit of fair practices, and members who have voting rights should not be deprived of exercising their rights too. Initially the SUPP HQ desired to forfeit the rights of over 800 members in Bintulu branch to take part in the branch party election …
“However, in the meantime, this is no longer a problem after I raised complaints about undisclosed changes of status from ‘O’ to ‘A’. This group involves mainly Chinese members at the branch. ‘O’ stands for once all payment members, which means they do not need to pay before April 30, 2011 in the election year. For ‘A’ members, if they did not pay before the deadline, they are not allowed to have a say. This type of money-rule should be abolished as soon as possible,” he said.
Ling stressed if SUPP headquarters tried to deny Bintulu members’ rights to vote, the RoS would look into it.
“For this group, some of them had said they wanted to see me and make a report to RoS where there is apparent prejudices, discrimination, unfair and wrong practices in operations of SUPP HQ. From there, a few of them are candidates for the Bintulu branch election.”