SARAWAK Pakatan Harapan leaders supporting a state federal village community management council (MPKKP) were today branded “traitors” by Tourism, Art, Culture, Youth and Sports Minister Abdul Karim Hamzah.

“Whoever in PH support the setting up of the MPKKP are traitors to the state,” Karim said in reference to the council better known by its Malay acronym.

“If you love Sarawak, you will definitely object to this and don’t let yourself be an ‘ulun’ (slave) to Malaya.

“You are a traitor if you support MPKKP,” Karim said in the state assembly today.

The MPKKP, to run in parallel to the state appointed Jawatankuasa Kemajuan dan Keselamatan Kampung (JKKK), or village development and security committee, is a highly controversial subject in Sarawak, and was the subject of heated debate in the assembly.

With the state election in two years’ time, Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) leaders have claimed Sarawak PH leaders are using the MPKKP as a vehicle to secure the rural votes to realise their ambition of wining the state now administered by the four-party Sarawak coalition.

“How can we have two tuai rumahs (village chiefs)? Can you imagine having two fathers in a house?

“That is unless you want to divide Sarawak,” Karim said.

“We already have a good system in JKKK. We don’t need another Malaya agency to teach us in the longhouse.”

Karim said the Sarawak PH leaders should be “able to smell the intention to colonise and divide the people in the villages”.

As if to reply to statements made by DAP Pelawan assemblyman David Wong, who on Friday asked why is the GPS so worried about the MPKKP, Karim said: “We (GPS) are not scared of MPKKP or PH”.

“If the election is tomorrow, we are prepared for it.”

Wong said the GPS assemblymen had treated the MPKKP “as if it’s a devil”.

“They see hantu (devil) when they see MPKKP.”

Quoting a Chinese proverb, Wong said GPS have nothing to be afraid of if they are righteous.

Nevertheless, GPS Muara Tuang representative Idris Buang went to as far as suggesting that the state use its immigration powers to bar anyone, including federal ministers, from the state “if they come here to destabilise economy, our social and culture as well as our politics”.

“Never give them any entry permit. Don’t care whether they are ministers because Sarawak must be first.

“For them, it is Sarawak last.” – November 11, 2019.