Minister: No guarantee Sarawak polls won’t see huge number of candidates like in Sabah

KUCHING, Sept 14 — Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) secretary-general Datuk Alexander Nanta Linggi today said there is no guarantee that the massive number of candidates in the Sabah election will not happen in the upcoming Sarawak state election.

“There is no guarantee. Nobody can be sure of that, not even me,” he told reporters after a dialogue session with the Federation of the Chinese Associations of Kuching and Samarahan Divisions here.

“The only thing we can assume is if there are some unexpected results in the Sabah election, some people in Sarawak may be encouraged and say if it can happen in Sabah, some people in Sarawak may want to try their luck,” Nanta said.

Nanta, however, stressed that political happenings in Sarawak and Sabah are not the same in terms of how elections have been conducted over the years.

“Even though both states are neigbhours on the island of Borneo, the political happening over there is not mirrored or not exactly the happening in Sarawak,” he said.

Nanta said GPS is interested in how the Sabah election is being carried out.

“Like everyone else, we find it a little extra-ordinary with so many candidates competing. That’s it, but perhaps, that is in line with what is happening there.

“Maybe some people feel that there is an opportunity to be elected so they participate,” he opined.

He said he sees the large number of candidates contesting for the 73 seats in the Sabah election as a natural process or the demand is there for it to be like that.

“Yes, I am really interested to see how is going on over there,” Nanta, who is also the federal minister of domestic trade and consumers affairs, said.

Asked on political parties in the Perikatan Nasional (PN) federal government contesting against each other on many of the seats, he said their relations at the federal level will be affected if they attack each other.

“If they campaign harshly and it becomes personal, I am sure it will cause some abrasions in their relationship.

“But if they campaign in a friendly manner and on policies, there is no hard feeling personally, then I see that there will be less of frictions.

“If you are aggressive, there will be aggressive reactions, maybe they will end up in a quarrel,” he said, adding that he hoped everybody is more objective, argue based on their policies and struggle, not escalate into something nasty.