The Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) is weighing its legal options against the Sarawak Democratic Action Party (DAP) for ‘unlawful acts’ during the Sibu parliamentary by-election last month.

The party, which has been licking its wounds since the disastrous polls outcome, is unable to get into specifics at this juncture.

Sarawak DAP’s Wong Ho Leng polled 18,845 votes to defeat SUPP’s Robert Lau Hui Yew by a 398-vote majority. Lau picked up 18,447 votes.

About 68 percent of the Chinese voters in Sibu opted for Sarawak DAP to hand the seat to the party after 28 years.    

sibu by election 070510 wong soon koh Deputy SUPP treasurer-general Wong Soon Koh ( left ) described as the Sarawak DAP as virtually “provoking and instigating the voters with all kinds of falsehoods during the campaign period.”

Wong was speaking last night with the local media on the sidelines of a graduation ceremony for a private institute in Kuching.

He denied that SUPP was being a sore loser but said that that the Sarawak DAP’s ceramahs in the battle for Sibu not only exceeded the bounds of decency, good behaviour and morality, they also levelled baseless allegations and charges at the state government.

 

“We are certainly considering legal action. We have recorded many of their campaign speeches as evidence.”

In contrast, he pointed out, the SUPP adopted a softer, more subtle approach when wooing the voters.

Wong also alleged that many of the Sarawak DAP campaign workers were in fact not party members but known samseng (hoodlums) specially brought from all over the state to harass the voters. He added that SUPP has video recordings as proof.

This unhealthy political culture, continued Wong, has no place in Sarawak.

Business as usual

The party doesn’t think that its campaign themes promising more development as outdated and plans to maintain the same approach that has worked successfully for it in the past.

NONE Turning to the urban Sarawak Chinese voters in particular, he appealed to them to think many times before casting their votes the next time for the opposition as the state BN is strong and will continue to form the government in Sarawak.

If Chinese voters continue to vote opposition, they will be eventually left with no representatives in the state government, Wong cautioned.

The result of the Chinese moving towards the opposition and the natives swearing by the BN “will create racial polarisation in Sarawak”, he claimed. “We are working hard to prevent this eventuality and are prepared for the state election whenever it’s called.”

Wong did not rule out the possibility of the party fielding more new faces to safeguard against the possibility that the voters might turn against the old guards at the next state election.

The old guards in SUPP are a sore point with Chinese voters, and the Sarawak DAP, which has a youthful lineup, has been capitalising on the age differences between the candidates of the two parties.

The SUPP is ostensibly multiracial. However, 15 of the 19 state seats traditionally allocated to the party by the state BN are Chinese-majority areas which the Sarawak DAP is also eyeing and with increasingly better results.

dapsy lodging report against utusan 161008 chong chieng jen SUPP is only assured of the non-Chinese votes, going by past trends, in the 15 seats. In the last state election in 2006, SUPP lost eight of its seats to the opposition. This has increased the Dayak clout within the party.

Kuching MP Chong Chieng Jen ( left ), also a state assemblyperson, had been quoted recently as saying that “SUPP was too comfortable in the state BN and needs a rude awakening”.

He has also been after Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud for his ostentatious display of personal wealth “while the people have been getting poorer over the years”. For his troubles, Chong was recently suspended for a year by the state assembly but is going to court on the matter.