PKR veep says DAP not giving full facts of Sarawak seat survey

(MMO) – The DAP only presented half-truths when it used the findings of recent surveys on several Sarawak seats to prove it was not to blame for the breakdown in negotiations on seat distribution, PKR vice-president Chua Tian Chang said.

Chua admitted that the surveys showed that DAP was the more favourable party in five of the six seats surveyed but said in at least three seats, the proposed candidates from PKR proved more popular than DAP’s secondary ones.

The Batu MP, who was part of the PKR team that negotiated seats with the DAP, also also accused the latter party of making unreasonable demands by wanting to contest most of the semi-urban seats, which are seen as winnable constituencies for both parties.

“The survey doesn’t really give the full picture,” Chua told Malay Mail Online.

“Yes if we look at the results… in terms of which party is more popular and planning of course DAP came out better. But candidates-wise we won in Mambong, Senadin and Batu Kitang,” the federal lawmaker said.

Due to overlapping claims during seat negotiations, the leaderships of both PKR and DAP commissioned independent pollster Merdeka Centre to conduct surveys in six seats – Tasik Biru, Batu Kitang, Mambong, Bukit Semuja, Simanggang and Senadin.

The DAP reportedly emerged the more popular party in five seats and negotiations later ended with both parties agreeing to a distribution formula involving 13 seats, with the DAP taking eight and PKR taking five, including the winnable Batu Kitang.

On Tuesday, DAP national organising secretary Anthony Loke said his party did PKR a favour when it allowed the party to take Batu Kitang although the DAP fared better there in the survey.

But according to Chua, the candidate PKR had proposed for the contest had actually fared better than the secondary candidate proposed by the DAP.

Malay Mail Online understands that the DAP had proposed Sarawak DAP chairman Chong Chieng Jen as its primary potential candidate for the seat. Chong is a well-known political figure in Sarawak’s opposition front, and is also a federal lawmaker as well as a state assemblyman.

For its secondary candidate, the party proposed Abdul Aziz Isa, who scored notably lower than PKR’s Voon Shak Ni.

“If you put him (Chong) there, he has the advantage of incumbency so of course he is going to be more popular. But if you pair our candidate (Voon) with their other candidate (Abdul Aziz), we actually did better,” Chua said.

He pointed out that the DAP did not end up fielding Chong for the seat, but has instead chose Abdul Aziz for the contest.

Abdul Aziz and Voon are now facing each other in Batu Kitang in a five-cornered fight with Barisan Nasional (BN) and two independents.

At the close of nominations on Monday PKR and DAP were seen pitted against one another in Mambong, Simanggang, Murum, Mulu, Ngemah and Batu Kitang.

Chua said of the 11 new seats recently carved out during the Election Commission’s (EC) redelineation exercise, PKR had initially only wanted three of the six semi-urban seats while the DAP asked to contest all five rural seats.

“They wanted the rest of the seats but we said cannot la like this (sic) because those seats were not surveyed. We said you take two we take two but they wanted all,” the PKR man said.

Despite the allegations, the Batu MP said his party was not interested in pointing fingers and urged their Pakatan Harapan counterpart to move on and focus on winning.

“At the moment let’s treat each other like healthy competition and at the same time focus on fighting our common enemy BN,” he said.

When asked if PKR would consider pulling out its candidates as a compromise, Chua rejected the idea but said this episode should prompt Pakatan Harapan to develop a better decision-making protocol.

“This warrants us to go back to the drawing board to improve on our decision-making mechanism but for now we should stop this tussle and focus on winning the elections”.