USNO seeking royal intervention if...

Seeking party with Usno name registered fast

KOTA KINABALU: Leaders of the United Sabah New Organisation or Usno urged the Registrar of Societies (RoS) and the Home Ministry to quickly decide on the party's application which was submitted on Oct. 26, last year.

Protem President, Datuk Badaruddin Tun Datu Mustapha, said RoS Sabah had informed them that the application had been sent to Putrajaya.

A check by protem Vice President, Abdullah Sani Abdul Salleh in Putrajaya, on June 28, revealed that the application had been referred to the Home Ministry.

Expressing concern over the delay, Badaruddin said they were giving the RoS and Home Ministry 14 days to respond to their official letter, requesting a decision on the application.

"If not our next course of action would be to ask for the Yang di Pertuan Agong to step in. In this respect, Usno members will be handing a memorandum to the King through the Sabah Head of State," he told a Press conference in Beverly Hotel, Tuesday.

Badaruddin said the Usno protem committee during its meeting on Monday also decided to urge the Barisan Nasional (BN) government to be transparent in its action against Usno, the namesake of which was the party that gained independence for Sabah.

He said the BN government should give former Usno members the opportunity to reactivate their struggle through an appropriate political platform and that it should not be considered a burden or illegal organisation.

They also urged the BN government to be fair to Malaysians in Sabah by allowing Usno to be registered just like other parties in Peninsular Malaysia such as the Makkal Sakti, which only took about 60 days to be approved.

If the party failed to be registered by the 13th General Election, they would find a way to get temporary registration to allow them to use their own symbol and party name to contest.

Badaruddin said the new Usno is a party for all people of Sabah and Malaysians and not only limited to the bumiputeras in Sabah.

According to him, the decision to revive the party with the same acronym of the United Sabah National Organisation (Usno) that was founded by his father Tun Mustapha Datu Harun, was in response to the members' displeasure over the non-approval of Club Usno, which they applied to be registered as a NGO in 2006.

He claimed that within five years, Club Usno's membership had grown to 100,000 throughout Sabah and that most of the old Usno members, particularly in the East Coast, had never joined Umno.

"Usno is Usno and Umno is Umno but we are disappointed that Umno has forgotten about Usno, which had brought them to Sabah.

"The hope is thin but we are confident," said Badaruddin, 51, who is the fourth son of Tun Mustapha. On how many seats the party planned to contest in the coming General Election, he said if possible "all 60 state seats".

On whether Usno would be aligned to BN or opposition or perhaps form a pact, he said, "we'll cross the bridge when we get there".

"However, in politics our doors are always open," said Badaruddin who had contested in 1994 in Usukan for the PBS Plus (a pact between Usno and Parti Bersatu Sabah).

To another question, he was confident that Usno would be able to give the other political parties, particularly Umno, a run for their money.

"I remember a Deputy Chief Minister said a few weeks ago that if you want to make noise, contest in the General Election, then we can tell who is greater.

"So I ask Datuk Yahya Hussin, please help us to get our party approved, then we can know whether Umno can beat Usno or not," he said to thunderous applause.

Nearly 50 members representing the various constituencies in Sabah attended the function together with some of the 13 protem committee members namely, Liang Chau Chu, Datu Zainuddin Datu Aliuddin, Azlan Abdullah, Datu Ariffin Datu Abdul Salam, Sabli Muhiddin, Osman Yakub and Cleftus Mojinggol (the former Pasok President).

The old Usno was disbanded by Tun Mustapha following the entry of Umno into Sabah with most of its members being absorbed into the party.

Daily Express