GABUNGAN Parti Sarawak (GPS), the state’s ruling coalition, has moved into first gear as it prepares to contest the next general election for the first time as a coalition.

Sarawak Premier Abang Johari Openg said the four-party ruling coalition’s supreme council at its meeting in Kuching late last night had agreed for the component parties to start mobilising their respective election machinery “to build a GPS election machinery”.

The four GPS parties are Abang Johari’s Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB), the Sarawak United Peoples’ Party (SUPP), Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) and the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP).

Abang Johari, who wouldn’t want to say if the election would be this year, nonetheless said the coalition needs to prepare in advance “even though we still have no idea when the election will be”.

As expected, GPS will contest all the 31 parliamentary seats in the state with the seat allocation to remain as that in the 2018 election – PBB 14 seats, SUPP (7), PRS (6) and PDP (4).

The four parties were previously in Sarawak’s Barisan Nasional.

They dumped the defeated national coalition soon after the defeat in the 2018 general election in favour of a state-based coalition.

Sarawak BN, which won only 19 seats, suffered shock reversals in rural Dayak seats.

Sarawak will only contest parliamentary seats in the next general election as it held its state polls in December last year.

With GPS now on a high having won a super majority in the 2021 state elections – sweeping 76 of the assembly’s 82 seats – its leaders are quietly confident it could repeat its state performance in the general election.

The reason Abang Johari said is that Sarawak needs a better parliamentary representation to put them in good stead for “a strong voice” to conclude several outstanding matters in the Malaysia Agreement 1963 negotiations that have yet to be concluded.

He pointed to the demand by Sarawak and Sabah for 35% of the seats in the Dewan Rakyat as one of the matters that still needed some push.

The Special Council on Malaysia Agreement 1963, at its September 8 meeting in Putrajaya, had agreed in principle to the demand.

However, Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob still has to bring up the matter to the federal cabinet.

Other matters, Abang Johari said were on having “certain empowerment” over health and education.

He added that the thorny issue of the Borneonisation of the federal civil service in Sarawak, and Sabah, is also still under negotiation.

“(We) need to defend our special privileges as spelt out in the MA63 and the IGC,” he said in reference to the Inter-Governmental Committee Report 1962.

The GPS supreme council meeting last night also saw the attendance of leaders of the component parties’ women and youth wings for the first time after the Registrar of Societies approved amendments to its constitution to enlarge the council.

Prior to this, only the presidents, secretaries-general of the four parties and the two deputy premiers make up the council. – September 14, 2022.