Chong regards Kota Sentosa as grey area
KUCHING: State DAP chairman Chong Chieng Jen has termed Kota Sentosa, which he is defending this May 7 state election, as a grey area for the opposition.
He said this followed the demarcation of the new constituency of Batu Kitang which was carved out from Kota Sentosa during the recent re-delineation exercise which resulted in 11 new state seats.
“There has been a major change of voters composition in Kota Sentosa. Voters were shifted out and added in. This is no longer a white area (to DAP),” he told reporters at the DAP headquarters here yesterday.
When asked to disclose more, Chong said the party was in the midst of studying the voters composition for Kota Sentosa.
“We will give you (reporters) the figures and maps in two days.”
Chong will be locking horns with BN-SUPP new face Wilfred Yap. Both Chong and Yap are lawyers by profession.
During the last state election, Chong garnered 12,594 votes to defeat SUPP heavyweight and former assistant minister Datuk Alfred Yap by a majority of 4,824 votes in a straight fight.
Meanwhile, Wong King Wei, who is expected to retain Padungan for DAP, believed the Chinese in Padungan and Pending would continue to support the opposition.
While describing the two Chinesemajority seats as safe, he said there was no way that all supporters would run away from DAP just because of the chief minister’s people-centric policies.
“Padungan and Pending have the highest composition of Chinese voters at 92 per cent and 89 per cent respectively. These two are the biggest support base of DAP.
“I am confident that these two will be retained despite Adenan’s effect. The question now is how big the majority will be. If we cannot win these two seats, I think DAP Sarawak will not win any seats.”
To a question, Wong believed urban Chinese voters would still rally behind DAP as they needed the opposition to play the check-andbalance role.
He was also confident that he would be able to retain the votemajority he obtained in the last state election. In the 2011 polls, he recorded a 7,884 vote-majority against BN-SUPP candidate Sim Kiang Chiok.