Ties between Sarawak BN allies worsens
Distrust and alleged ‘sabotage’ within the Sarawak BN coalition’s Dayak parties may jeopardise the march to the polls.
Joseph Tawie, Free Malaysia Today
KUCHING: A tit-for-tat game is being played out in Sarawak between rival Dayak majority rural parties SPDP and PRS, with both parties accusing each other of “sabotage”.
Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party (SPDP) and Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) are at loggerheads and it is unlikely that the situation is going to improve anytime soon.
The presence of PRS secretary-general Wilfred Nissom at a dinner hosted by the sacked leaders of SPDP over the weekend has further widened the rift between the two parties.
Seated at the main table, Nissom did not explicitly expressed support for the group which has declared themselves as “members of the Barisan Nasional Club”.
But his presence is enough to tell a story.
Political observers here see his presence as a provocation and retaliation in relation to another incident in the Julau constituency recently.
At that function, Meluan assemblyman Wong Judat, who is also SPDP vice-president, had covertly supported “another” possible candidate wanting to contest against PRS vice-president and incumbent Joseph Salang.
Salang is tipped to defend the seat.
PRS leaders have accused Judat and his supporters of working hand in glove with the former MP for Julau Sng Chee Hua in trying to unseat Salang in the coming election.
“Nissom’s presence looks like it is an eye for an eye,” a veteran politician said.
“It certainly will widen the rift between the two BN component parties,” he added.
Offshoots of PBDS, SNAP
The rivalry between the two-Dayak based parties started to rear its ugly head when PRS claimed the right to represent all the seats contested by the defunct Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS).
PBDS was deregistered on Oct 24, 2004. PRS was formed to fill the vacuum.
On the other hand, SPDP claimed the right to contest all Dayak seats contested by Sarawak National Party (SNAP).
SPDP was formed in November 2002 as an offshoot of SNAP which was pushed out of the BN coalition.
Likewise, PBDS was also an offshoot of SNAP when several of its Dayak leaders resigned from the party to form PBDS in September 1983.
By logic, all the Dayak seats “owned” by SNAP should be inherited by SPDP.
It is very clear that the rivalry between the two parties is over the right to represent the Dayak community.
Both SPDP president William Mawan and PRS chief James Masing have always tried to project themselves as the leader of the Iban community.
With PRS having eight seats, Masing should have been appointed as deputy chief minister as PRS became the second largest party in the state coalition.
SPDP, however, now has only two after the expulsion of four state assemblymen from the party, while Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) has six seats.
But Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud did not appoint anyone of them as deputy chief minister.
Sneaky Masing
Instead, Taib appointed all of them including SUPP’s Wong Soon Koh as “senior ministers”, a title which has no meaning at all.
Currently, the BN state government has one only deputy chief minister following the defeat of George Chan. And he is Alfred Jabu Numpang, also from Taib’s Pesaka Bumiputra Bersatu (PBB) party.
Back to the SPDP-PRS “problem”. When the errant group known at that time as “SPDP 5” walked out of SPDP’s supreme council meeting in January 2010, declaring their loss of faith in Mawan’s leadership, Masing seized the opportunity to renew the talk about merger between his party and the group.
The merger had originally been up for talk in 2005 but it fizzled out.
At that time Masing attributed the failure of the talks to “certain characters in SPDP” who had a “growing” influence in the party.
Although Masing did not name the “characters”, it is common knowledge that he was referring to MP for Bintulu Tiong King Sing, who was then the SPDP treasurer-general.
Among the first persons to greet the “rebels” after their January 2010 walkout from SPDP was Masing.
He brought the five – the MP for Mas Gading Tiki Lafe and representatives Peter Nansian (Tasik Biru), Peter Nansian, Sylvester Entri (Marudi), Rosey Yunus (Bekenu) and Paulus Gumbang (Batu Danau) – for a number of meetings and barbeque sessions.
One or two of them even joined Masing in Kapit.
Among the things they discussed was to proceed with the merger between PRS and SPDP.
