PKR Sarawak leaders bought over, says Sarawak Report
(Sarawak report) – According to multiple sources and evidence viewed by Sarawak Report, the former PKR Sarawak head, Baru Bian, and his remaining supporters within the party are set to join PSB, a party that is funded by Sarawak’s wealthy timber families and regarded as a vehicle for the Governor Taib Mahmud’s attempts to take back more active control of the state.
It is a development that many of Baru’s national and international supporters will view as a shocking betrayal, given his former dedication to native land rights and condemnation of rampant logging and plantations conducted by Taib and the crony timber companies behind PSB.
Baru Bian has informed close colleagues that his plan is to keep the matter secret for now and to announce the defection when the state assembly (DUN) sits in April. He would thereby present a fait accompli towards his former party, which had been seeking to minimise the damage caused by the Azmin Ali defection from PKR and to invite initial waverers (including Baru Bian) to return to the fold.
Baru’s two rebel colleagues Ali Biju and Willie Mongan, have both taken up Azmin’s offer to join the as yet to be legitimised PN coup coalition government as ministers. However, Baru himself stepped back from the brink when the extent of the defection became clear – Azmin’s coalition has ditched support for their former leader Mahathir and now props up the return of an UMNO led coalition, together with PAS and Muhyiddin as the puppet ‘PM8′.
Baru has plainly recoiled from association with the criminal elements of UMNO and the Malay/Muslim supremacist agenda of the coup coalition. However, he is not prepared to reconcile with his former party or the new leadership that has been put in place locally in Sarawak, after remaining loyalists voted in Larry Sng as a controversial replacement.
Larry Sng has indicated to that he would be willing to work with Baru should he return to PKR. However, it is clear that the wealthy entity that is PSB has seen its chance to pick off a batch of the opposition’s better known figures.
Concerned informants within Sarawak’s GPS component parties have alerted Sarawak Report that the party is being designed by Taib’s economically powerful allies to undermine the new leadership of the state government currently lead by Abang Johari, who succeeded the late Adenan Satem, a popular successor to Taib as chief minister.
PSB intends to take seats from the GPS component parties, whilst posing as an independent force to attract opposition votes. In this way Taib and his business cronies plan to keep control of the political management of the state after the next state election, by acting as king makers or even the dominant party. Such a commanding position would ensure that no action is taken against corrupt practices in which they have been involved and allow them to continue to plunder the state’s resources unfettered.
The stakes are therefore high and it has been made plain to those who are presently being wooed to join PSB that there will be unlimited funds available to reward key members of the party and to splash on voters likewise. For would-be defectors from cash-challenged PKR this is perhaps a tempting prospect.
Large sums are now being promised to be deployed in order to reconfigure Sarawak’s entire political landscape at the next election. Baru and any others seduced by PSB will be merely pawns in a subtle move to bind the political establishment firmly back under the thumb of the Taib family’s political and business empire under the guise of an ‘independent’ party.
