CM: Winnability main criterion

KUCHING: The state Barisan Nasional (BN) may nominate `winnable’ candidates from BNfriendly United People’s Party (UPP) and Parti Tenaga Sarawak (Teras) during the 11th state election.

In stating this, state BN chairman Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Adenan Satem said his decision to give BN ticket to any of the parties with winnable candidates was made easier by the creation of 11 new state seats.

“I will give the BN symbol to winnable candidates, including candidates from Tanjung Datu,” Adenan told The Borneo Post here yesterday.

When pressed further whether it would mean giving the BN ticket to UPP and Teras, he quipped, “There are all possibilities due to the creation of 11 new seats”.

Currently, the four state BN component parties PBB, SUPP, PRS and SPDP are reluctant to discuss the claim on seats by UPP and Teras.

With Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muyhiddin Yassin saying in Kuching recently that he would leave the decision on seat allocation to Adenan as state BN chairman, Adenan should now be able to settle the thorny issue amicably to ensure that BN wins more seats in the coming state polls, which must be called by June next year.

In the last state election, PBB as the state BN backbone party, was allocated 35 seats, SUPP 19 seats, PRS nine and SPDP eight seats.

But with the emergence of the two new political parties due to protracted internal bickerings within SUPP and SPDP, leaders of these two new parties claimed they had always been part of BN.

Their statements were often backed by Adenan on many occasions, who even called the present state government a ` BN-Plus government’.

This is evident by the continued presence of elected leaders from UPP and Teras in the State Cabinet - Dato Sri Wong Soon Koh and Datuk Dr Jerip Susil (both from UPP) and Tan Sri William Mawan, Datuk Peter Nansian Ngusie, Datuk Sylvester Entrie Muran and Rosey Yunus (all from Teras).

Meanwhile, when met later, SUPP president Senator Datuk Dr Sim Kui Hian said his party was confident of winning the 19 seats traditionally allocated to the party.

“Out of the 19 seats, we are particularly confident of 11 of them, and we believe these 11 seats are already within our grasp,” said Dr Sim.