Pakatan Rakyat will cease commenting on the Registrar of Societies (ROS) over the coalition’s bid to be formally registered and instead wait for a written reply on the matter.

PKR secretary-general Saifuddin Nasution said the first thing ROS should do was to decide on the application submitted by the coalition’s then pro-tem chairperson Zaid Ibrahim.

“(As) the initial application not been decided upon, the ROS used the excuse that Pakatan did not submit a new application after Zaid had resigned.

“When the new application was submitted to ROS chief assistant director (societies division), he refused to accept the application because the initial application had not been decided upon.

“Thus, today we urge the ROS to bring out a black and white letter to state the decision on the initial application. Once that is done, we will submit a new application,” he said.

After a fallout with PKR late last year, Zaid quit the party and his position as pro-tem Pakatan chief was replaced by PAS central committee member Kamaruddin Jaafar.

Earlier this month, ROS director-general Abdul Rahman Othman was quoted saying that Pakatan had made no new effort to register the coalition.

Saifuddin denied this, instead claiming that Pakatan had been pursuing the matter with the ROS since March with a fresh application.

Last week Abdul Rahman labeled Pakatan leaders who criticised the ROS including Saifuddin, as “liars who are greedy for power”.

Abdul Rahman had told Utusan Malaysia that Zaid’s application was automatically cancelled after he quit PKR and denied having rejected any fresh applications.

The coalition made up of PAS, PKR and DAP, has been trying to register itself after the pact was formed on April 2008.

The three parties cannot field candidates under a common logo during an election without approval from ROS.