KUCHING: The Bill to add 11 new state seats under the Dewan Undangan Negeri (Composition of Membership) Ordinance 2014 during the last State Legislative Assembly sitting will be gazetted soon.
Once the Bill has been gazetted, the state government will notify the Election Commission (EC) that will in turn notify Parliament for the Bill to be debated.
State EC director Datu Takun Sunggah yesterday said the possibility of 11 new seats being contested in the coming state election which must be held by 2016 is very high as the Bill could be approved by a simple majority in Parliament.
Currently, Barisan Nasional (BN) controls 133 seats out of the 222 seats in Parliament.
Takun added that once Parliament has approved and passed the Bill, EC will then display notice on the new seats to the public for their feedback.
Once the Bill is approved by Parliament, Sarawak will have 82 state seats, making the state having the most number of seats in the country. The state also has the biggest number of parliamentary seats at 31.
Currently, within BN, the lion’s share of the seats are allocated to PBB (35 seats), SUPP (19 seats), PRS (nine seats) and SPDP (eight).
Although the four state BN component parties have not indicated their interest in these additional seats, they would likely stake their claims once the seats are approved by Parliament, which could be as early as next year.
With the additional seats, BN friendly parties such as Teras, a break-away party from SPDP, and UPP, a breakaway party from SUPP, could be accommodated.
However, that could only happen if all BN component parties agree to their admission.
Currently, Teras has five seats and UPP has four which were won by the incumbents when they were still with SPDP and SUPP.
Both SUPP and SPDP insist the seats are theirs under the state BN allocation agreement while Teras and UPP claim the seats belong to them under the BN banner as the incumbents are their members.
This situation has to be resolved before the next election although there seems to be no clear answer to the impasse at the moment.