In trying to understand how it lost seven state assembly seats in the 2006 state election and the Sibu parliamentary seat last year, all that the Sarawak United People's Party (SUPP) could come up with was that the electorate had been hoodwinked by the opposition.

The party is already in strange waters. Once steeped in a leftist tradition buttressed by an ostensibly multiracial platform, SUPP is nowadays nothing more than a Sarawakian answer to the MCA.