Bernama file photo for illustration purposes.
KUCHING (Mar 29): The Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) Backbenchers Club has taken DAP Sarawak chairman Chong Chieng Jen to task for creating a negative perception of the state-federal relationship between Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) and Perikatan National (PN).
They said in a statement that the Stampin MP had once too often lashed out at the Sarawak government by ignoring the facts to rally his support base.
Citing the statement made by Chong yesterday where he had described GPS as a ‘kingbeggar’ and not a ‘kingmaker’, the GPS Backbenchers Club reminded the opposition leader that it was in fact he himself who begged GPS to support Pakatan Harapan (PH) to keep them in power during the political turmoil on Feb 29 last year.
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“It was PH Sarawak, especially DAP, who begged Sarawakians to continue to be sidelined just because they wanted their Malayan bosses to remain in power. This is despite of the many attacks against GPS and their neglect of Sarawak interests during their stint at the federal government.
“And now, to say that we are beggars, we would like to ask him this. What does this make you?” they questioned.
Chong during his Facebook live session yesterday had claimed the the GPS government had become a ‘kingbegger’ and listed four issues that demean the coalition as such namely the Covid-19 Immunisation Programme, the Batang Lupar Bridge project, the use of the word ‘Allah’ and Undi18 ((lowering the voting age in the country to 18).
The GPS Backbenchers Club pointed out that for all of Chong’s valiant efforts to spin the issues of the Batang Lupar Bridge project and the use of the word ‘Allah’, all these could and should have been resolved during PH’s time as the federal government.
“For instance, the Undi18 was passed in the Parliament on July 2019, why didn’t the PH government see it through to its implementation immediately? Why wasn’t the Election Commission (EC) given the resources they needed to make sure of such there and then?” they queried.
In regards to the Covid-19 vaccine procurement, they stressed that the state government never said that it did not need to rely on the federal government for vaccines.
“What the state government said was that it will buy its own vaccines to complement the supply from the federal government.
“It is a widely known fact that the Covid-19 vaccines are in short supply worldwide, hence the need to procure different types of vaccines from different manufacturers and also to get bigger supply allocation from vaccines procured by the federal government,” they explained.
The GPS Backbenchers Club gave its assurance that the GPS government will continue to put the interests of Sarawak first, be it in delivering infrastructure development, defending Sarawak’s rights, empowering the youths and ensure that the state recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic.
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