SERIAN, March 8 — Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) will not support a federal government if DAP is part of it, its chairman Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Openg said today.
He said he made this very clear when GPS was asked for its support on who should be the prime minister of Malaysia.
“Finally, our view was that we could not work with the DAP. It is that party that had claimed Sarawak would go bankrupt within three years,” he said in a town hall session in Gedong, about 30 kilometres from here.
“So I said how could we work with this kind of party which made such claim?” he asked, recalling what DAP secretary general Lim Guan Eng had alleged at a dinner in Kuching on June 21 last year that the state government would go bankrupt in three years’ time due to its large state budget.
Lim, who was then the federal finance minister, had said the state budget was RM11 billion while the state reserves was just RM30 billion.
He had said if every year the GPS spent RM11 billion, in three years’ time, there would be nothing left in the state’s coffer.
He had said if the state government was ruled by PH, then it was easier for it to work with the PH federal government, such as returning the status of Sarawak as an equal partner to Peninsular Malaysia, instead of being one of the states in Malaysia.
Abang Johari said the DAP, instead of working with GPS, made disparaging remarks against the state government.
“So I said I could not work with the DAP,” he said, explaining why GPS would not support the federal government if DAP is part of it.
Abang Johari also dismissed a clarion call from Sarawak DAP chairman Chong Chieng Jen for GPS to save the PH federal government from collapsing.
“The Sarawak DAP was asking us for help. Asking us to forget about the past.
“How can we forget the past?” he asked, referring to the allocations for bridge projects and water and electricity supplies which were cancelled by the PH federal government.
He said the state government leaders were not stupid and they knew how to look for funds for these cancelled projects.
“Now, it is God’s wish that the PH is out of power.
“There would not be any MPKKP (Federal Village Community Development Council) to be set up in Sarawak,” he said, adding MPKKP would cause disunity and break-up among the rural communities if PH was still in power.
