Sarawak polls ‘not too far away now’, says CM

KUCHING, June 15 — Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Adenan Satem gave his strongest hint yet today that the state election is likely to be called before the expiry of his government next June.

The PBB chief also urged grassroots leaders to up the ante for the polls to prevent non-locals from interfering in the affairs of the Borneo state, including Umno.

“I am telling you that the elections is not too far away from now,” he said at a state Barisan Nasional (BN) grassroots leadership seminar here.

Over 400 leaders attended the one-day seminar, the third to be organised by the state BN, in preparation for the coming state polls.

Playing on anti-Peninsular sentiments, Adenan reminded the people to vote for BN component parties.

“If you love Sarawak, you elect those whom you know, not parties like PKR, DAP and PAS,” he said.

“We must follow our Sarawakian ways, we manage our affairs our own ways and not receive instructions from outside,” he added.

Adenan, who is also the state BN chairman, blamed peninsula-based parties for the ethnic and religious tensions in West Malaysia, including Umno and urged Sarawakians to reject them.

“I have told the prime minister to his face that we do not want Umno to come to Sarawak… only me dare to tell him that,” he said.

Adenan also took a swipe at Islamist party PAS for its persistence in rolling out the Shariah criminal code based on the argument that it was God’s law.

“We do not want the hudud from PAS to be implemented in the state because it is not God’s law,” he said.

He said Sarawak has some 40 ethnic groups but had never been plunged into interracial unrest, unlike in the Peninsula and vowed to keep those who would cause such troubles out of the state.

“That is why we have banned the likes of Ibrahim Ali and controversial convert Ridhuan Tee Abdullah to come to Sarawak,” he said, referring to the president of Malay rights group Perkasa and a Chinese-Muslim convert respectively.

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