SIBU: The pinching of members among Pakatan Rakyat (PR) parties does not surprise Asajaya assemblyman Datuk Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah.
Abdul Karim, who is Assistant Minister of Youth Development, noted that DAP had always looked down on its PR partners.
“It is for this reason that DAP is intensively recruiting Malays, Dayaks and other native races into their fold and organising programmes like ‘Impian Sarawak’ in Bumi areas, where their PR partners have been contesting all these years,” he told The Borneo Post yesterday.
He was asked if the alleged member-pinching among Pakatan parties was an indication that the opposition could not work together.
According to news report, cracks were appearing in the state PR after one of two elected representatives of Sarawak Workers Party (SWP), and a senior supreme council member of the party were allegedly approached by another PR component party to jump ship.
SWP president Larry Sng reportedly said the members had declined the offer.
Sng was further quoted as saying that this would damage to their working relationship and derail their road map to join the opposition coalition.
Abdul Karim, who is PBB supreme council member, said he could only deduce that DAP was on an expansion drive in areas ‘alien’ to them, which were left to their PR partners before.
“They are doing this because they don’t have faith, they don’t trust their PR partners and they want to be the lead party in PR Sarawak,” he said.