SIBU: Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) already has a list of candidates for the seven parliamentary seats allocated to the party for the 15th General Election (GE15).
Its president, Datuk Seri Dr Sim Kui Hian said for the Sibu and Lanang some names have been identified and the candidates will be decided in the near future.
“For Sibu which has three SUPP branches namely Bawang Assan, Nangka and Pelawan, each branch will send one name for consideration.
“And after that, we will get views from other component parties about the candidate to be elected, we will choose only one name.
“The same goes for Lanang which has two SUPP branches namely Bukit Assek and Dudong,” he explained at a press conference after officiating at the launching of the UTS Smart Home and UTS Home Book at University Technology Sarawak (UTS) yesterday (Oct 12).
Sim who is Deputy Premier insisted that SUPP will not exchange seats with any party in order to be fair to party members or SUPP branches in the area.
“All these branches have worked hard and if there is an exchange of seats, this is not fair to them,” he said.
Sim said, whoever is considered winnable will be chosen regardless of whether the candidate is new or old, young or old.
“We look at the needs in the area and the candidates who can win,” he said.
He added that this GE15 is an opportunity for Sarawak to send a strong signal to the federal government, especially regarding Sarawak’s rights.
“My duty as SUPP president is to ensure that the party goes through this GE15 as a team. In GE14, SUPP only won one seat out of the seven parliamentary seats contested. SUPP only won in the Serian parliamentary seat,” he said.
On another note he said a lot of people are not happy, including him that the federal budget allocation for Sarawak is only RM5.4 billion out of RM90 billion.
Towards this end he said Sarawak needs to be strong to fight for its rights.
“If we have 31 MPs, and if they (federal) want to form a government, GPS will be the party they need to form a government with and it does not matter which one,” he said.
