A founding member of MUDA tells us what the early days of MUDA were like.

“MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA” is something you’d either hear in a JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure episode, or would’ve heard at the Malaysian United Democratic Alliance’s (MUDA) press conference at the KL High Court yesterday. No, they weren’t there because they were accused of something nasty – the courts had just ordered our Home Minister to register MUDA as a legit political party within 14 days.

Wait, wait. What’s MUDA? Why’s it such a big deal that they’re getting registered? To answer those questions, we hit up Abolqaz bin Anuar a.k.a. Bobol, a member of MUDA since its foundation and part of their information team. Suffice to say, we’ve got some juicy info for y’all.

 

MUDA was an “underground” party for over a year

A little background on MUDA: before establishing MUDA, Syed Saddiq was a member of the Malaysian United Indigenous Party (BERSATU) and the Minister of Youth and Sports under the Pakatan Harapan administration. When the infamous Sheraton Move happened in 2020, he got kicked out of BERSATU and instead of joining the Homeland Fighter’s Party (PEJUANG) as per expectations, he founded MUDA instead.

Thing is, your political party isn’t considered “legal” if it’s not registered with the Registrar of Societies (RoS), which MUDA has been trying to do since January of this year. Their initial attempt was rejected, and no reasoning was given for the rejection. Unwilling to take that lying down, the fledgling party then decided to take the legal route (literally) by trying to get the courts to order the RoS to get them registered… three times.

Bobol recounted the difficulties MUDA faced while trying to be legally recognized as a political party:

It was very difficult. We had to work underground, we couldn’t hold any funds and so many people did not want to join us on account that MUDA does not really exist.

Despite that, Bobol said that they worked around the obstacles they faced, and MUDA chapters were set up across the country… and after more than a year of trying to get registered, the courts finally had good news for them.

 

The courts ordered the Home Minister to make MUDA an official party

The first time MUDA filed a lawsuit through a judicial review (a process where you ask the courts to review something that’s done by the gomen) application, the courts dismissed them because they didn’t appeal to the Home Minister against the RoS’s rejection (again, it’s just part of the process)… which they then did on the very same day. After waiting for more than two months for the Minister’s decision, MUDA filed a second lawsuit in April this year.

Literally five minutes before the August 12 court hearing started for the second lawsuit, the Minister told MUDA that their appeal against the RoS’s rejection was… rejected. Hence, the third lawsuit.

According to Bobol, Many of MUDA’s members were in front of the KL High Court while the proceedings were going on – there were even reps from every state in Semenanjung. When news broke, the atmosphere was electric. They were jumping for joy, cheering and pumping their fists in the air.

During the subsequent press conference, Syed Saddiq had some choice words for his compatriots. He thanked MUDA’s members for their hard work, and said that the battle has just begun:

You, all of you will bring the flame of MUDA to every corner of the country. It’s true we do not have money, experience, power and positions like so many others. But what we have are pure and clean hearts. We are here because we want to serve, not because we want to hold positions or power. After this we must work 100 times harder. Not to destroy political enemies, but to build a better country.

If y’all wanna check out the entire speech, click here!

 

What are MUDA’s plans going forward?

When we asked Bobol what the freshly-minted party’s plans are for the immediate future, he said he could only speak for himself:

The immediate plan for me at least, is to work on increasing the strength of MUDA. Mostly by increasing membership and supporters numbers… I am not at liberty to say anything more than that.

Seems like there’s more where that came from, but we get that they can’t reveal all their cards at this point in time. Their long term plan is, as Bobol said, to be in government (why didn’t we think of this before we asked?).