Report on extra 13 state seats to be made public — Junz
KOTA KINABALU: The unrevealed report of additional 13 Sabah state seats for the 14th General Election (GE14) should be made public and more seats should be established in the Chinese areas with high population density for GE15, according to Parti Warisan Sabah (Warisan) vice president Junz Wong.
He said that to date, Warisan had not yet discussed political issues as everybody in the state government was still busy with their own administration and duties to run the state.
“I think, personally, we will reveal it (the report). There is certainly a need to increase the number of seats for Sabah because certain areas still need a lot more seats to actually service the people.
“Also, it is a constitutional requirement that after 10 years we need to increase it. They actually increased it but at the end, they (previous government) did not (implement it). I don’t know why,” said Junz, who is Agriculture and Food Industry Minister.
“In my opinion, I think we will reveal, especially, for the Chinese areas. It is long overdue that we need to have more seats for Chinese areas because the area reach up to 50,000 and 60,000 (in population) and still only one seat (there). In rural areas it can sometimes reach up to 10,000 to 20,000 for one seat.
“I feel, we need to continue with additional seats but do we continue with the seats that had already been determined or need to study it with AG (Attorney General) in terms of law? Are we permitted to do it that way or do we need to bring it to State (Legislative) Assembly? So we will study properly and we will make an announcement later,” Junz said at the 2018 Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry (MAFI) Hari Raya celebration at Wisma Pertanian here yesterday.
The 13 new state seats were not included in the recent 14th general election (GE14) even though a bill had been tabled and passed at the Sabah State Legislative Assembly on August 9, 2016 and the Head of State gave his assent to it a week later.
A report on it was also never tabled in Parliament by former Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.