Parti Sosialis Malaysia's application to join Pakatan Rakyat will soon be decided by the Pakatan Rakyat leadership council, Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim said today.

Anwar, who is also PKR de facto leader, said that the matter has been brought to the Pakatan Rakyat secretariat, which comprises the secretaries-general of the three coalition partners.

"The secretariat has discussed with PSM the Pakatan policy, their party logo and other matters.

NONE"There is no decision yet (on PSM's admission) as this matter will be brought to the Pakatan leadership council soon. We will discuss this with the members of the three parties," he told a press conference.

There have been three or four meetings at various levels between PSM and representatives of Pakatan Rakyat.

He explained that the Pakatan leadership council had entrusted its secretariat and other party representatives to discuss the application in depth with PSM, after which a report would be tabled to the council for the matter to be deliberated.

PSM had last week asked for the status of its application to join the opposition coalition, which comprises PKR, PAS and DAP.

Seat negotiations with SAPP on-going

Anwar, who is also Permatang Pauh MP, said seat negotiations with Sabah's SAPP party were still going on.

He then touched on the dynamics of Sabah politics and said SAPP had declared its support for Pakatan.

“Initially, Tian Chua (PKR vice-president) and Azmin Ali (PKR deputy president) were asked to look into the seat negotiations. We nearly finished negotiating, but the problem is that SAPP is asking for too many seats.

“There are five other opposition parties in Sabah. Besides PKR, PAS, DAP, there are Angkatan Perubahan Sabah (APS) headed by Wilfred Bumburing and Parti Pakatan Perubahan Sabah (PPPS) headed by Lajim Ukin (former deputy housing and local government minister).”

Anwar said the seats had to be divided among six parties and SAPP had to take this into consideration.

The seat allocations with SAPP would be decided by the Pakatan leadership council meeting, he said, adding, “I am not involved in the seat negotiations”.

Malaysia's reputation affected in Philippines

On the issue of Sabah chief minister Musa Aman protecting alleged Philippine conman Manuel Karingal Amalilio, Anwar said the episode had tarnished Malaysia's image in the Philippines.

“I believe Musa has some relationship with Manuel, who is a suspect in several cases of criminal breach of trust involving Southern Filipino Muslims and others.

“I believe President Aquino had wanted due process to be carried out and for Manuel to be brought back there to answer the allegations against him.

“Malaysian authorities should not be seen to be covering up or to be protecting this person. I know Musa is related to Manuel, but that is not the issue as the matter is whether this person had collected a huge amount of money from the Philippine people before escaping to Sabah.

“It is only proper that Malaysia cooperates in this situation. Why must the Malaysian authorities be seen as covering up in this case, for haven't we covered up enough cases of corruption within our borders?

“We should not be condoning this, especially as there has been an official statement made by President Aquino regarding this matter. This issue will tarnish the country's international standing,” Anwar added.