SNG Chee Hua, the high-flying Sarawak politician notorious for his party-hopping antics, has been made bankrupt by his younger brother.

A bankruptcy search at the Department of Insolvency showed Sng Chee Kian had on March 24 filed a petition in the Kuching High Court to have his millionaire businessman brother – and father to Julau MP Larry Sng – declared a bankrupt.

There were no reasons stated in the Department of Insolvency search result on why Chee Kian wanted his brother declared a bankrupt.

The court made the adjudication order on the petition, case number KCH-29NCC-388 /10-2020 (HC4), on March 26 – just 10 days after Chee Hua celebrated his 74^th birthday.

Chee Hua was a two-term Pelagus assemblyman in his hometown of Kapit between 1991 and 2001, and a one-term MP for Julau from 1995 to 1999.

He was then vice-president of the predominantly Dayak party, Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS), which was deregistered in December 2003, following a leadership tussle in which he played a key role.

With then political ally, former PBDS information chief James Masing, they moved on to form Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS).

Masing, now a deputy chief minister, was installed as president while Chee Hua was made his deputy.

PRS was then a key coalition partner in the Sarawak Barisan Nasional and is now one of the four parties in the current state ruling coalition Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS).

The Masing-Sng partnership lasted only two years.

Soon after the 2006 state elections, Chee Hua and his son Larry engineered an attempt to topple Masing in a fashion reminiscent to what the elder Sng did in PBDS.

Their aim was to have Larry made president.

In the two-year tussle for the reins of the party, PRS had two presidents, two sets of supreme councils and two headquarters.

When the Registrar of Societies (ROS) in 2008 declared Masing as the legal president, the axe came swift for the Sngs and their supporters.

In 2012, Chee Hua took over a dormant political party, renamed it the Sarawak Workers Party (SWP), and tried to use it as a vehicle to get his son out of the political wilderness.

SWP’s first election foray was in the 2013 general election, which turned out to be a disaster.

Larry contested in the Dayak-majority seat of Lubok Antu but lost.

So did all the SWP candidates.

In April 2016, Larry unexpectedly dumped SWP.

Chee Hua, who spent most of his time and money trying to get his son back as an elected representative, fielded him (Larry) as an independent in his old stomping ground, Julau, in the 2018 general election.

Larry won and the win paved the way for him to join PKR soon after.

A friend and confidant of PKR president Anwar Ibrahim, Chee Hua then put his heart and soul into the party contesting in party elections to become the Sarikei division chief in November 2018.

That friendship, however, took a hammer blow when Larry, then Sarawak PKR chief, dumped the party in February to pledge his support for Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin and became a pro-Perikatan Nasional independent MP. – April 16, 2021.