Adenan vows to quit office if Umno enters Sarawak

S'WAK POLLS Sarawak Chief Minister Adenan Satem has declared that he will resign from office if the state BN's coalition partner Umno enters Sarawak.

"We do not want Umno to come to Sarawak, I already told Umno president (Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak) about this, and Umno will not come to Sarawak," Adenan is quoted as saying by The Borneo Post today.

“They can come and help with the election, but they will not set up branches in Sarawak because BN is already very strong in Sarawak.

“As long as I am the chief minister, they will not come here. If they do come here and set up their branches, I will resign,” Adenan said at the gathering of Shin Yang Group, a timber company, in Miri last night.

Adenan, who is state BN chief, said Umno came to Sabah in the past because "Sabah BN was very weak" and described the state BN in Sarawak today as "strong".

Just before the 1990 Sabah state election, Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS), led by then chief minister Joseph Pairin Kitingan, left the BN coalition. PBS then won its third state election.

Soon after its fourth victory in the 1994 election, which was won with a slim majority, PBS was unable to form a government after PBS lawmakers defected to BN.

Umno, which entered Sabah that year, led the new state government under chief minister Sakaran Dandai and has since been the dominant state component party.

Sarawak and Sabah were part of four equal partners in the 1963 Malaysia Agreement, the other two being Malaya and Singapore.

After an amendment to the Federal Constitution in 1976, with agreement by the two Borneo state governments, Sabah and Sarawak were then designated as federated states.

Called as BN's 'fixed deposits', support for the ruling government in Sabah and Sarawak prevented the BN coalition's defeat in the 1999, 2008 and 2013 general elections. -Mkini