The People's Progressive Party has not issued an ultimatum to Barisan Nasional about leaving the ruling coalition over its demand for additional seats in the general election.

PPP president M Kayveas said the issue of giving such an ultimatum never arose, adding that his comments yesterday about asking for additional seats were misinterpreted by the media and some Umno leaders.

"Why should I give BN an ultimatum? I was asked the question by the press if we (PPP) would leave BN if our requests are not heard and I said we will talk about that after all seat negotiations are over," he told malaysiakini when contacted today.

He was responding to calls by several senior Umno leaders, including party deputy president Najib Abdul Razak and party vice-president Muhyiddin Yassin, that Kayveas should retract his ultimatum to BN and not hold the ruling coalition to ransom.

Najib, who is also the deputy prime minister and the BN deputy chairperson, told reporters today that talks over seat allocations were made based on consensus in the Barisan power-sharing spirit and principle.

"We decide based on the Barisan principle and spirit," he said, adding that he didn't "think PPP will leave the Barisan."

Return of the traditional seats

When asked to comment, Kayves said that all that the party wanted was some form of negotiations with the BN over allocations of additional seats for the party.

"I am under pressure from my members... this party is growing and we need more seats to show that," said Kayveas, who is also the deputy minister in the Prime Minister's Department.

"We are not instructing BN on the number of seats that we want. All we are saying is at least listen to us, talk to us. There is no harm in talking. And then we can come to a consensus," said Kayveas.

He said that ideally his party would want the BN to apply the same principles it applied to Gerakan in Penang.

"Just recently the prime minister said that Umno would not be seeking the chief ministership in Penang as it has an agreement with Gerakan over that matter."

"We want to BN to recognise the same sort of agreement it had with PPP in the 1960s over seats in Perak," he said.

He however stressed that PPP was not making a demand for the return of all the seats the party held in Perak during its heyday in the 1960s.

"As I said, please recognise that we have grown stronger over the years and we want to be recognised for that. We would like if BN could give us seats which were traditionally ours to contest in the general election," he said.

"But again I stress, we are not issuing an ultimatum to the BN. We are asking them to listen to us and then make a decision." he added.

The fight for Taiping

PPP had a strong grip in Perak in 1960s when it controlled four parliamentary seats, 12 state assembly seats, 79 local council seats and the post of the Datuk Bandar of Ipoh.

Its powers dwindled over the years as a result of infighting and lack of direction, resulting in the party losing its traditional seats, until Kayveas assumed the leadership in 1993 and steered it to stability.

At present the party has only one parliamentary seat, Taiping, which is held by Kayveas, who is fighting hard to hold on to that seat for the next general election.

The fight for the Taiping seat symbolises the type of battle PPP is facing within BN.

Originally one of the party's traditional seats, PPP lost Taiping to Gerakan over the years, allowing Gerakan to have a strong presence there.

In the last general election, some last-minute seat manoeuvring between Umno, Gerakan and PPP resulted in the seat being allocated to PPP again after a long absence.

However now Gerakan wants to reclaim the seat, asking PPP to find a seat elsewhere, something which Kayveas totally disagrees.