Sarawak activist cautions GPS against teaming up with Umno, PAS to take Putrajaya
KUCHING, Feb 25 — Solidarity Anak Sarawak (SAS) leader Peter John Jaban today expressed concern over reports that Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) is considering a coalition with Umno and PAS to form the federal government.
Jaban, a human rights activist, urged Sarawak Chief Minister Datuk Abang Johari Openg, who is also GPS chairman, to consider carefully how this new coalition will be perceived in a multi-cultural and multi-racial Sarawak.
“Umno and PAS were defeated in the last general election in a widely acknowledged rejection of both corruption and race politics and a call for reform,” Jaban said.
He added people put an end to decades of Umno rule, in which race and religion were used as a political tool to divide rather than unite, and corruption had grown to epic proportions.
“These two parties lost at the ballot box and there is no other way to interpret the events. They lost, plain and simple,” he said.
Jaban noted that Umno president Datuk Seri Zahid Ahmad Hamidi is currently facing 47 charges of corruption relating to public funds.
“For this alone, he should be deemed unfit to hold public office in the opposition, let alone in the government itself,” he said.
Jaban said Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang is the head of an Islamist party which blocked the ratification of the International Convention on all forms of Racial Discrimination and campaigned only recently for the implementation of hudud law in Malaysia.
“How can Abang Johari consider making a coalition with these characters and then return to Sarawak to contest a state election using the message of Sarawak’s great racial and religious harmony?” he asked.
“Sarawakians are, indeed, different. We do not appreciate race politics and we live in an atmosphere of religious tolerance. We also maintain a separation between federal and regional concerns,” he said.
He stressed any coalition with the losers in the last federal election will be a strong message to the electorate of Sarawak that GPS is willing to subvert the democratic process and to risk the state’s racial and religious balance.
“While we realise that there is currently a drive for greater autonomy and the relationship with the federal government is central to that, we are all necessarily and rightly judged by the company we choose to keep,” he added.
Jaban noted that GPS underwent a significant and largely successful rebranding to distance itself from the fallout from the widespread corruption within the previous Barisan Nasional administration in Putrajaya.
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