Restructuring the only option for SUPP to move forward — Secretary-general
KUCHING: With Sarawak United People’s Party ( SUPP) having its Central Working Committee (CWC) meeting today, its secretarygeneral Prof Dr Sim Kui Hian is of the opinion that there are no other options but to restructure the party.
During a press conference at SUPP headquarters here yesterday, he told reporters that the party would be examining and analysing results from Sunday’s 13th General Election ( GE13) to identify the necessary measures that ought to be implemented.
“We will be carrying out a post- mortem and do whatever is necessary and this includes investigating on whether our candidates were sabotaged during the election. If we find evidence that our candidates were sabotaged, we will not hesitate to take action,” he stressed.
Commenting on the huge loss suffered by SUPP in GE13, Dr Sim noted that this might be because of racial polarisation as well as polarisation between urban and rural dwellers.
“If you look into the rural areas, the Chinese voters do support Barisan Nasional ( BN) while in some of the urban areas, there are other races besides the Chinese who support the opposition as well. Of course, with the urban area comprising more of the middle- class society which are mostly Chinese, therefore their views and needs differ from the Chinese community living in rural areas,” he opined, pointing that these factors would be among the issues that would be addressed by the party.
Nevertheless, the choice made by the people should be respected, Dr Sim remarked.
“Whatever it is, we need to respect each other, irrespective of opinions and come together as a peaceful country whi le concentrating on how to develop our country. What we need now is to fight for better income, better facilities and better equality for everybody,” he said.
Dr Sim also pointed out that despite the loss SUPP had managed to gain quite a good number of votes from supporters, specifically in constituencies such as Sarikei, Miri and Sibu.
“For instance, in Sarikei we only lost by 505 votes and this slim margin translates that there were a lot of supporters,” he noted and expressed his gratitude to the people who had shown their support for the SUPP candidates.
Meanwhile, SUPP youth chief Tan Kai conveyed his appreciation to the people of Bandar Kuching who had voted for him in GE13.
“The 10,491 votes are very important and serve as a motivation for SUPP to march forward. We will never give up and will continue with our struggle,” he said.
Also present at the press conference were SUPP women chief Tnay Li Ping and youth secretary-general Wilfred Yap.