The Malaysian Insight

IT has been six months and the Registrar of Societies (RoS) has yet to approve Muda’s registration as a political party, said Mutalib Uthman, co-founder of the party.

Mutalib said the reason given to them was that the RoS was still conducting background checks.

“Our background is clear, we have also done interviews internally to ensure that our members are clean, they do not have criminal records and are not bankrupt. This is our own due diligence.

“We want them to speed up the process,” he said.

On January 7, Muda said RoS rejected its application to register because it did not meet the First Schedule of the Societies Act 1966 and that the application was rejected in accordance with Section 7 (3) (e) of the Act.

The party had filed its application to register in September 2020.

Muda said it saw no concrete reason for its application to be rejected, especially given that they had cooperated fully.

They said Perikatan Nasional was blocking the registration to prevent Muda from participating in the next general election.

Mutalib said since the party has been perceived as weak, there was no reason not to register them.

He said the party was only seeking its right to become an association as provided under the federal constitution.

“We are not an illegal organisation, a cult or terrorist. We are not a threat to anyone.

“They think we are weak. Tajuddin Rahman (Umno’s Pasir Salak MP Tajuddin Abdul Rahman) has called our president (Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman) a child, ‘cucu atok’ and the cyber troopers are also attempting to make us look weak,” he said.

Mutalib said in the first two weeks of Muda’s establishment, they received more than 30,000 applications to join the party.

“We have slowed down on the recruitment as per the RoS’ request. We have stopped our recruitment and activities.

“Otherwise, we will have a lot more members, but we are merely following their instructions,” Mutalib said.

On January 12, Muda and 12 other individuals asked the court for leave to challenge the RoS for rejecting their application.

Muda named the RoS and the Home Minister as the first and second respondents in the suit.

The court on February 4, rejected the application, saying that it had failed to comply with the provision under Section 18 of the Societies Act 1966 where they should have first appealed the matter to the Home Minister. – March 25, 2021.