In an unexpected turn of event, Sarawak PKR has vetoed the seat negotiation consensus arrived at the national level among Pakatan Harapan allies.

It reversed its initial decision to stand in 40 seats in the May 7 Sarawak state election.

Sarawak PKR chairman Baru Bian has informed the national headquarters of the state PKR's latest decision.

With this, Baru said both Sarawak PKR and its counterpart Sarawak DAP still have overlapping claim in four to five state seats.

On Monday, Pakatan Harapan presidential council had managed to settle all the overlapping claims in seat negotiation.

Sarawak DAP has announced today that it will contest 29 seats compared with 15 seats in 2011 state election.

While the presidential council has yet to finalise the seat negotiations, Baru said, the state PKR had received indications that the talks had been steered in a direction that went against the mandate of the state presidential council.

Very accommodating

Sarawak PKR had indicated it reserved its veto power if the decision made at the national level was not in line with what has been decided at the state level, he said.

"For the sake of fairness to our local members, and in order to uphold the integrity of the state presidential council with regard to our duty and undertaking to our potential candidates, we have made the decision to exercise our veto powers.

"We have indicated to our national leaders that we are unable to accept the decision made at their level as far as the allocation of seats is concerned," he said in a statement.

Baru said the state PKR had been very accommodating in its claims for seats as it only wanted to stand in 40 seats compared with 49 seats in 2011.

"With the increase of 11 seats in Sarawak, our claims have not increased but reduced as we are always willing to share seats with our Harapan partners," he said.

Baru, who is also Ba'kelalan state assemblyperson, said Sarawak PKR would make the final decision on the seats they are contesting based on its KPI result.

"Our decisions will be based purely on the winnability of our candidates, and not for any other reasons.

"We believe that in taking this step, we are merely giving effect to the autonomy that has been acknowledged by our national leaders as being our right," he said.

"It is regrettable that certain parties have seen fit to jeopardise the opposition coalition’s potential to increase our seats in the coming election by their conduct these past few months while negotiations were taking place," he said, without naming any one.