DAP has again cost Anwar Ibrahim the crucial support of Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) for his bid to become the prime minister, observers of Sarawak’s political scene said.

The Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition president had alienated the one bloc which could have made him the country’s ninth prime minister in the latest political turmoil, they said.

The four-party Sarawak coalition’s 18 MPs could easily have pushed Anwar past the 111-vote threshold he needed to succeed Muhyiddin Yassin, who resigned on August 13 after losing parliamentary support.

Instead GPS backed Umno prime ministerial candidate Ismail Sabri Yaakob.

Anwar was reported to have had the support of 105 MPs.

Retired political science professor Jeniri Amir said the conduct of DAP leaders Lim Guan Eng and Chong Chieng Jen when the party was in federal government had angered GPS leaders.
 
DAP secretary-general Lim was the finance minister and Sarawak DAP chairman Chong, the deputy domestic trade and consumer affairs minister in the PH government of 22 months.

Lim was accused of cancelling dozens of infrastructure developments in the worth hundreds of million ringgit in Sarawak.

The projects were approved by the Barisan Nasional government prior to the 2018 general election.

Projects to supply water in water-stressed areas and five major bridges on the state’s coastal highway were among the developments scrapped, reportedly was to punish Sarawak which was then an opposition state.

To rub salt to the wound, Lim, on a visit to Sarawak in June 2019, had famously said Sarawak would go bankrupt in three years’ time because of alleged financial mismanagement.

Jeniri said those actions and claims had not only created problems for DAP but also its coalition partners, including PKR, which is headed by Anwar.

GPS also has a long standing dispute with Chong.

The Stampin MP has a long history of shouting matches and heated encounters with GPS leaders in the state assembly.

University of Tasmania’s Asian political expert James Chin agreed there was no way GPS would have supported Anwar as the state’s ruling coalition would not want to work with DAP led by Lim and Chong.

“It’s not only Guan Eng but Chong (with whom GPS refuses to work),” Chin said.

Political analysts said the four-party GPS also preferred to work with “people they are familiar with and can reasonably trust” to be prime minister.

“They were with the Barisan Nasionan (BN) for more than 40 years. They are very comfortable with the BN no matter what they call themselves now.”

GPS had supported Muhyiddin instead of Anwar to become prime minister when Dr Mahathir Mohamad resigned in February of last year. 

“(GPS has a) long history of working with BN and Umno; they trust Umno and BN more. So given a choice, they would go with Ismail and that’s what happened,” Chin said.

Universiti Malaya’s Awang Azman Awang Pawi said GPS felt  safer working with old partners like Umno which it considered its “big brother” even though GPS had long exited BN.

Chin said GPS did not back Anwar because “they don’t trust Anwar”.

“That’s the bottomline. They don’t think Anwar can deliver what he promised.”

Awang Azman disagreed there is a trust issue between GPS leaders and Anwar who had worked together when they were all in the BN.

“Those who have followed Sarawak politics will know that more than 20 years ago, Anwar was reported to have supported Abang Johari in the Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu party polls against Adenan Satem in the contest for the deputy president’s post.

Awang Azman was alluding to the 1998 PBB elections where Abang Johari defeated Adenan and Abang Abu Bakar to become the party’s deputy president.

Abang Johari, in Mukah to launch the Centex campus yesterday, had said that GPS supported Ismail’s candidacy because there was a need to have a “stable government” in Putrajaya.

“What is important is that the (federal) government should be stable because we are in the midst of a pandemic,” he added.

That argument has a familiar ring to it as it was also the reason GPS had supported Muhyiddin instead of Anwar in their bids for the prime minister’s office. – August 29, 2021.