DAP to blame for clashes over seats, says Sarawak PKR

 

PH chairman Anwar Ibrahim has said that he was not worried over the issue of contests between PKR and DAP in certain seats, ahead of the Sarawak elections.

PETALING JAYA: The Sarawak PKR leadership council has accused Sarawak DAP of refusing to discuss seat allocations for the Sarawak state polls openly and transparently.

In a statement by PKR’s state leadership council, it said they have always tried to be magnanimous and practise the principle of “setiakawan” (friendship) among Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition partners in Sarawak.

“However we would like to state for the record that it is not us who are trying to create issues in certain seats but it is Sarawak DAP that have refused to negotiate openly and transparently with us.

“For many months, we tried to meet with Sarawak DAP’s top leadership to discuss the matter but were faced with blank refusals,” it said.

It was reported that PH chairman Anwar Ibrahim has said he was not worried over the issue of contests between PKR and DAP in certain seats, ahead of the Sarawak elections.

Anwar, who is also PKR president, said talks are ongoing to avoid a repeat of the results in 2016 when overlapping contests were identified as one of the factors behind the opposition coalition’s failure in the state polls that year.

The council said that it had explained that, after the departure of Sarawak PKR chairman Larry Sng in February, any personal agreement made between him and Sarawak DAP was null and void.

“This was done independently without the knowledge and consent of PKR grassroots leaders in Sarawak,” it said.

Addressing one of the disputed state seats, Kemena, the PKR council said it had identified a strong potential Dayak candidate who has done extensive community outreach and welfare support and “enjoys impressive grassroots support from the local Iban community”.

The council said Kemena was originally a PKR seat but was “on loan to DAP in the 2016 election which they then went on to lose”.

“With the strength of our present candidate, we requested the return of our Dayak-majority Kemena seat.

“We presented our candidate’s KPI and dossier to the Sarawak PH chairman (Chong Chieng Jen) but he refused to even read or acknowledge it.

“What was even more puzzling was that the PH chairman refused to tell us who he had in mind as a candidate in Kemena. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no DAP-led grassroots outreach in Kemena for over three years,” it said.

The council said Sarawak DAP had also lost the Senadin and Piasau seats to SUPP in the 2016 general election, while its candidate for Pujut was disqualified because of dual citizenship issues.

This led to the Pujut seat being vacant for three years.

“We requested DAP Sarawak to discuss their candidates with Sarawak PKR so we could work on a winning formula together but Sarawak DAP refused to negotiate,” it said.

It said PKR Sarawak had strong grassroots support from both the Chinese and Dayak communities in these three seats, pointing out that PKR’s Michael Teo Yu Keng won the parliamentary seat of Miri in 2018.

It said that despite offering a win-win formula where PKR would take the two state seats while DAP could take one, DAP refused to engage in any negotiations and continued to demand all three seats. - FMT