DAP tears up SUPP race card
By Stephanie Sta Maria, Free Malaysia Today
KUCHING: DAP opened fire on SUPP today for playing the race card despite failing the Chinese community in Sarawak.
SUPP has warned the Chinese that they would lose representation if Pakatan Rakyat were voted into power.
Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng said the warning contradicted SUPP’s multiracial positioning.
“Don’t give us all this obnoxious talk,” he said this morning at DAP’s first media conference on the campaign trail leading to the April 16 Sarawak election.
“PBB, SUPP and BN only represent themselves and (Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul) Taib (Mahmud), not the Chinese or any other community.
“The feedback we have been receiving in the past few days gives a sense of disappointment with SUPP over its failure to deliver. And if your leaders fail to deliver, then they must be punished.”
Kota Sentosa candidate and Bandar Kuching MP Chong Chieng Jen cited several instances of SUPP “selling out the Chinese”.
He said the party voted against DAP’s proposal for the full renewal of expired land leases, it denied Chinese contractors direct contracts from the state government and it had done nothing to arrest a drop in the number of Chinese civil servants at both federal and state levels.
According to Chong, the proportion of Chinese in the federal civil service had dropped from 30% to 5% between 1971 and last year. He said he could not show the racial breakdown in the state civil service because the Taib administration had refused to release the figures.
Lim had a kind word for SUPP’s line-up of fresh faces, but said it was irrelevant because the party wanted Taib to remain in power.
“I have no doubt that they are qualified and decent candidates,” he said. “But as long as they support Taib, then they are nothing more than his puppets.
