Pakatan questions Taib’s rush to be sworn-in as CM
By Debra Chong, The Malaysian Insider
KUCHING, April 17 — Pakatan Rakyat (PR) questioned today Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud’s haste to be sworn in as Sarawak Chief Minister for the seventh term immediately after Barisan Nasional’s (BN) two-thirds electoral win yesterday, and linked it to the prime minister’s growing influence here.
The DAP-PKR-PAS opposition bloc noted the white-haired 74-year-old nicknamed “Pek Moh” had wasted no time and rushed to the governor’s residence in Astana despite the late hour as soon as the official results were in.
“Taib was hastily sworn in as chief minister at 10.40pm,” the DAP’s secretary-general, Lim Guan Eng, pointed out at the opposition bloc’s joint press conference here today.
Guan Eng’s father, DAP advisor, Kit Siang, cut in with his observation that “it’s as if there were higher powers trying to stop him from becoming chief minister.”
“Whether he is afraid Najib may intervene and spoil his plans… We do not know.
“It’s a question that only Taib can answer,” the senior Lim said.
The DAP scored its biggest win in Sarawak yesterday, doubling its presence to 12 seats and caused an upset by packing off six-term incumbent and deputy chief minister Tan Sri George Chan Hong Nam from the Piasau state seat.
PKR won three seats while PAS lost in all five seats it contested despite initial confidence that PR could take away BN’s two-thirds majority in the state as it did at the federal level in Election 2008.
PR had made Taib’s departure from power as the main plank of its campaign but the PBB president ensured that his party won all 35 seats it contested to keep him in power.
There is speculation that he will remain as chief minister until he can take over as the state governor from the current incumbent, 89-year-old Tun Abang Haji Muhammad Salahuddin Abang Barieng once his term expires.
