AFTER about a week of campaigning, PH Sarawak is “quietly confident” of winning the “difficult seat” of Selangau.

PH has fielded PKR chairman Baru Bian in the seat of 30,026 voters, of whom 90% are of the Iban tribe.

“It’s not that people like Pakatan Harapan or PKR. We’re just reaping the backlash on Barisan Nasional,” Sarawak PKR deputy election director Baharuddin Mokshen told reporters in a media briefing in Kuching, today.

It was an 11th hour decision to field Baru in Selangau, after local Selangau PKR leaders convinced Baru that the prospect of winning had improved now that Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS), a Barisan Nasional component party, had sacked the three-term MP there Joseph Entulu.

Entulu was sacked just a couple of days before nomination day for allegedly working against “party interests” after he was told he would be dropped from defending the seat he won for the first time in the 2004 general election.

Most political observers, however, believed the sacking of Entulu, who was a minister in the Prime Minister’s Department before the dissolution of Parliament, was because of his feud with party president James Masing and a pre-emptive move against any attempt by Entulu’s supporters in the BN hierarchy to reinstall him on the BN nomination list.

PKR claimed it benefitted from the sacking as angry Entulu supporters would now support Baru.

Flyers, reportedly produced by the “people of Selangau” and calling for the rejection of the BN candidate Rita Sarimah Insol and “vote for PKR and Baru Bian” have now been making the rounds in the rural constituency in central Sarawak.

The flyers claims the “people of Selangau” are unhappy as the sacking by Masing had caused a split among the people there and had denied them a minister.

PKR is also angry at Masing over his describing Baru’s foray into Selangor as “an Orang Ulu from the highland (of Ba Kelalan) who has little knowledge of Iban language trying to make good in a 90% Iban area”.

Baru is of the Lun Bawang tribe, one of the many ethnic tribes found in the interior of Sarawak which are grouped as Orang Ulu (people of the interior).

Baharuddin accused Masing of bringing back racial politics, the very kind of politics that he said had “stoked racial tensions in the peninsula”.

“Masing’s call on voters to reject an Orang Ulu in a 90% Iban constituency, that is the politics of 20-30 years ago.

“It’s outdated, archaic political thinking.

“We are no more talking about racial politics. We are now talking about the merits and the ability to deliver and represent the voters in Parliament.” – May 3, 2018.