Sarawak parties see no future in Umno-PAS alliance
“You have to remember in Sarawak, non-Malays are the majority”
(MMO) – Umno risks alienating its former allies in Sarawak and a key political bloc by entering into a pact with PAS as the ultra Malay political alliance will be seen as a liability to the ruling coalition’s multiracial base.
The Coalition of Sarawak Parties (GPS) has already criticised the Umno-PAS alignment as a threat to progress, saying a single-race coalition would tear into the country’s multiracial fabric.
“Malaysia is a multiracial country hence no single race is able to dominate political control,” PBB vice-president Datuk Seri Stephen Rundi Utom said in a text reply to Malay Mail.
“To govern this country effectively we have to form coalitions…therefore if Umno-PAS merge as a single race party, our future will be jeopardised.”
Rundi’s response underscores the growing divide between Borneo-based political parties and its former peninsula ally, which they feel have become too Malay-centric for Sarawak’s polity of highly diverse communities.
