KUCHING: United People’s Party (UPP) submitted its application to change its name Parti Sarawak Bersatu (PSB) and its new logo to the Registrar of Societies (RoS) Sarawak yesterday.
UPP’s secretary general George Lo and UPP’s executive secretary Margaret Lo were at the RoS Sarawak’s office at Queen’s Court, Jalan Wan Alwi here at 2.30pm to hand over the application to RoS Saawak’s director Georgina Apphia Ngau.
Speaking to the reporters later, George said, “We must follow the legal procedures under the Societies’ Act which is that Party’s name and logo can only be changed upon approval by the Registrar of Societies.
“So legally, at the moment, we are still UPP. We can only use PSB after the Registration of Societies have approved it.
“We have asked the Sarawak’s director to kindly assist to expedite sending it over and hopefully, the Head Office will approve our change of name and logo very quickly so that we can use the new name and the new logo,” he added.
According to George, as informed by the director of RoS Sarawak, political party is not under the RoS Sarawak but only under the Headquarters so she could only help by passing the application over to the headquarters.
“Hopefully, it can be approved. She also told us that if through the computer system application for amendment normally takes 23 days. So we hope, maybe because it is manually done, it can be shorter or it maybe even a bit longer. It is very hard to say,” George said.
According to him, the director had also said that she needed to check whether PSB had been taken by any other society or not.
“I know PBS is already in existence, that is why we don’t use PBS. Hopefully, there is no PSB,” he said.
Asked if there are many more applications to join the party, George said in the affirmative.
“ Certainly, we are going to go on the ground. We are going to recruit a lot more members and our door is open to anybody.
“As I say we share the same inspiration and vision. We hope that our party will get bigger and more multi-racial. We do not want to be just a Chinese base party like we were before.”
Asked if there were truth on the speculation that Datuk Joseph Entulu had applied to join UPP, George said, “That I do not wish to comment. Perhaps, that question would be best directed to Joseph Entulu himself. But as I said, our door is always open to anybody who shares the same vision that we have and if Datuk Joseph Entulu shares that same vision that we have , then we would welcome him as member of our party.”
He said at this stage no application for membership had been received from Entulu yet. He said he was also not at liberty to disclose at the present moment whether there was any conversation going on.
On whether Datuk William Nyalau had also applied to join the party, George said no formal application had been received from him too.
“Yes, I know that they (Datuk William Nyalau and Dr Johnical Rayong) are very good friends. Certainly if Datuk William Nyalau makes formal application to join our party, his application will be given the fullest consideration. For both the two of them (Entulu and Nyalau) or anybody else who shares the vision that we share we welcome anybody,” he said.
He agreed that it would be a great asset if UPP were to accept them.