Ban Peninsular Parties From Sarawak Elections State Govt Urged

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Parti Bumi Kenyalang president Voon Lee Shan urged the Sarawak legislative assembly to approve a motion to bar peninsula-based parties from contesting in elections in the state. (Bernama pic)
PETALING JAYA: A Sarawakian party has urged the Gabungan Parti Sarawak government to amend the state’s constitution to prohibit political parties from Peninsular Malaysia from taking part in state and parliamentary elections in Sarawak.
Parti Bumi Kenyalang said the elections should be made a state affair and no political parties from the peninsula should “interfere” with them directly or indirectly.
Its president, Voon Lee Shan, said the next meeting of the state assembly should approve a motion for the ban to “remind the people of Sarawak that nowhere in the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) does it state that political parties from the peninsula can take part in the political affairs of Sarawak”.
Sarawak’s DayakDaily quoted Voon as saying in a statement that DAP was one of the earliest West Malaysian political parties to set foot in Sarawak, “which was brought in by a few former members of the Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) in the 1970s”.
Since then, he said, other peninsula-based political parties, including PKR and PAS, had also entered Sarawak to contest seats during elections.
Voon, a former DAP assemblyman for Batu Lintang, said it was agreed that seats for Sarawak in Parliament are for the state and not meant to be contested or “taken away” by political parties from the peninsula. At the moment, he said, Sarawak has been allocated 31 seats in Parliament, and Sabah 25.
“If a seat is won by a political party like DAP or PKR, then this seat is taken away from Sarawak for a political party from Malaya.
“This should not be accepted. The taking away of seats from Sarawak has diminished the bargaining power of the state in Parliament.
“The voice of Sarawak is hardly heard because Malaya controls Parliament.”
In June last year, Voon had made a similar call to SUPP to seek an amendment to the state constitution to bar peninsula-based parties from contesting elections in Sarawak.
He also said SUPP should withdraw its support for the unity government if it was serious about opposing politics from peninsula-based political parties. - FMT

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