IT is not even a week old and the Perikatan Nasional (PN) Sarawak liaison committee has already hit a couple of major bumps.

While a senior leader of the state’s ruling coalition Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) is “suspicious”, the man asked to become the committee’s deputy state elections operations director denies all knowledge of it.

Currently, Bersatu and PAS are the two PN parties in Sarawak.

“I am not a Bersatu member and have never applied to be one,” former Sarawak PKR deputy chairman Baharuddin Mokhsen told The Malaysian Insight. He was named as the deputy to PAS’s Zharudin Narudin to chart PN’s election strategy.

“When I saw my name on the list, I had quite a shock. How I got to be appointed is now rather questionable.

“I don’t even know with whom the committee was set up to liaise. Is it between state PN and federal PN or between PN and GPS?”

While in PKR, Baharuddin was also the state election director for the 2016 state polls and subsequently 2018 general election.

In 2016, PKR managed to hang on to the three seats in the assembly it won in the 2011 state election.

Meanwhile, in the 2018 general election, PKR retained one seat and acquired three more.

Like most of PKR Sarawak’s best known leaders, Baharuddin was sacked following the party’s leadership turmoil in February last year for aligning himself with Mohamed Azmin Ali.

He admitted he was once approached by Bersatu Sarawak chief Jaziri Alkaf Abdillah Suffian about joining the party.

“That was so long time ago I have forgotten exactly when it was. Nonetheless, nothing came out it.

“(I am) definitely not a Bersatu member.”

In the appointment list distributed to the local media last Saturday, Baharuddin was listed on the Bersatu roll.

“I am definitely out of active politics for the moment,” he said, adding that he has taken a sabbatical from politics to concentrate on civil society work during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

On Tuesday, Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB) vice president Abdul Karim Hamzah, said setting up a committee when the election is near makes him suspicious of PN’s motives.

“What do (they) want? Are (they) telling us (they) want some seats after this?” Karim said as he rubbished Jaziri’s assertion that since GPS is part of PN at federal level, PN is part of GPS at state level.

Karim reiterated that GPS – made up of four Sarawak parties with PBB as the lead party, Parti Rakyat Sarawak, the Sarawak United People’s Party and Progressive Democratic Party – only supports the PN federal government, but it is not a member of the coalition.

“We only support. We are not part of the PN.

“(So) that does not mean in Sarawak, we can just accept you just like that. That is why we will not support (PN) even though they are our friends.”

Karim made it clear GPS “will not support parties from Semenanjung Malaysia”, even though they might be “friends” in the coming state election. – September 23, 2021.