SARAWAK could take legal action to block Putrajaya’s plan to appoint community leaders in the state, said a state minister today.

Assistant Housing and Local Government Minister Penguang Manggil said one of the laws the state could use is the Community Chiefs and Headmen Ordinance 2004.

The ordinance gives Sarawak the prerogative to appoint its longhouse/village chiefs and community leaders.

“We have the laws. Sarawak will enforce it when the time is right,” he said after closing an environmental awareness programme for community leaders and members of the local government in Kuching.

Manggil said taking the federal Pakatan Harapan government to court “is just one of the possibilities”.

“It is not the only means,” he said.

He said Putrajaya’s insistence of appointing community leaders as “just one step towards political colonisation of Sarawak”.

“There’s no necessity for this Majlis Pengurusan Komuniti Kampung (MPKK – village community management council),” the Marudi assemblyman said.

The PH government set up the council soon after it won power in last May’s general election.

In the peninsula, the MPKK replaced the ousted Barisan Nasional government’s village security and development committees (JKKK).

Manggil said the council would “split people in rural areas”.

He said PH’s candidates for the council were not wanted their communities.

“If you look in my constituency, the people who are registered with MPKK are actually defectors.

“They are not needed by their village people. They have nowhere to go.

“A lot of them have no social standing. They are like outcasts, not needed here nor there.”

Leaders of the Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) state government are asking why PH is  insistent on the council appointments.

Manggil asked why can’t Putrajaya use the dozens of federal agencies that are on the ground as the bridge between the people and the federal government.

He said an MPKK member has to be a member of a PH party and all business must be done at their service centres.

PKR’s Saratok MP Ali Biju, a driving force behind the MPKK, had said the federal government was doing it due to the circular issued by the Sarawak state secretary in October last year prohibiting civil servants and community leaders from attending PH functions.

PH said the village or longhouse chiefs and other community leaders were picked by the government, and not through an election by their community. – October 23, 2019.