Dato Sri Peter Chin Fah Kui
KUCHING: Going by the results of Sunday’s 13th general election (GE13), a majority of Chinese voters have rejected Barisan Nasional (BN).
Making the observation, SUPP president Dato Sri Peter Chin Fah Kui said the phenomenon did not only occur in Sarawak but throughout the country.
‘This phenomena did not happen solely in Sarawak but also in our neighbouring state of Sabah and in west Malaysia and I can honestly say that the Chinese voters are not happy with BN and maybe the result was to deliver the message from the Chinese on not choosing BN for many reasons.
“It is also why we (SUPP) only won one seat where the majority of the voters were Bumiputera and this was in Serian constituency,” he said when contacted to comment on the party’s disastrous loss in GE13 yesterday.
SUPP only managed to win one out of the seven parliamentary seats they contested, losing Bandar Kuching, Stampin, Sarikei, Lanang, Sibu and Miri.
Chin added that as the party’s president, he no doubt felt responsible for the party’s loss as it had also affected the state BN’s performance.
“As the party’s president, I feel very responsible for our defeat and would like to apologise to all members, party leaders as well as to the state and federal BN,” he said.
In view of this, he revealed that SUPP would be carrying out a detailed post-mortem in addition to obtaining feedback from the candidates who lost in an effort to look for strategies that would enable the party to continue to be relevant among the Chinese community.
Besides that, he said SUPP would also be holding a Central Working Committee (CWC) meeting tomorrow to look at the issues and problems that contributed to the party’s loss.
“After that, then we can determine the party’s direction…to remain or otherwise but right now it is still too early to make any conclusions as the election had only come to a close last night (Sunday),” he said.
GE13 saw SUPP unable to retain Miri seat which was held by Chin for six terms when its candidate Datuk Sebastian Ting lost to Dr Michael Teo of Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) and Stampin where its five-term incumbent Datuk Yong Khoon Seng lost to Julian Tan (DAP).