SIBU: Voters in Balingian state constituency will reject the opposition’s brand of politics founded on malicious campaigning and lies.
This is because voters there are mature and know which party has been helping them, said PBB supreme council member Datuk Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah yesterday.
He was reacting to state PKR chairman Baru Bian’s statement that PKR would field a local candidate and use the price hike as their weapon against BN.
Tagging themselves as ‘underdog’, Baru claimed they were capable of winning the hearts of the people there despite it being a BN stronghold.
To this, Abdul Karim, who is Assistant Minister of Youth Development and Asajaya assemblyman, said: “What else is new to PR or PKR?
“I thought they have been using price hike as one of their main campaigning issues in the past election and this one is nothing new.”
He reckoned that PKR must have been looking for issues as propaganda the last few days and could only come up with the “price hike” again to hoodwink the people.
“But I can say…voters in Balingian are not stupid. They would not fall to malicious campaigning and lies of PKR.
“They know which party has been helping them and would be the umbrella for them in time of need,” Abdul Karim said.
He pointed out that PKR was just wasting their time contesting the Balingian constituency, adding “the seat is already as good as ours”.
A by-election will be held in Balingian as the seat fell vacant following the appointment of Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud as the new Yang Di-Pertua Negeri of Sarawak.
Election Commission (EC) secretary Datuk Abdul Ghani Salleh had issued a statement that the EC would convene a special meeting on March 6 to discuss the Balingian seat.
Based on the 2011 electoral roll, Balingian constituency has 11,792 voters. In the 10th state election, Taib won with a huge majority of 5,154 votes.
He garnered 6,210 votes in a three-cornered fight with Datuk Salleh Jafaruddin, who stood as an Independent, and PKR first timer Suriati Abdullah. Salleh polled 1,056 votes while Suriati obtained 871 votes.