Awang Tengah brushes aside allegations that he wants to topple Taib
KUCHING: Second Minister of Resource Planning and Environment Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hassan said he is giving his full support to Chief Minister Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud to continue leading Sarawak to greater progress and advancement.
Brushing aside allegations by a foreign blog that he was leading a plot to topple the chief minister, Awang Tengah said: “It is not my culture in politics to go against the chief minister or any other top leader.
“I am a leader who has full respect for our political culture and I do not have the ambition to go further as I am content to carry out whatever tasks given to me by the top leadership,” he said in a special interview with the media on Wednesday.
“Honestly, I was totally caught by surprise when I knew about the report and so were all those implicated in the report insinuating that there are problems in Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB). So this a ploy to create disunity in PBB. This is not my culture in politics.”
The minister said the foreign blog made assumptions and baseless accusations against the state government and its leaders.
Awang Tengah, who is also Minister of Public Utilities, added that he was among the first to dissuade the chief minister from retiring from politics as Taib deserved support.
He cited a previous PBB convention when he was asked to contest for the vice-president post and won, but then voluntarily let go the post for the sake of the party.
The minister said under Taib, Sarawak has been very stable as his leadership has brought about social and economic transformation including for the well-being of the people in the rural area through the politics of development.
Taib’s politics of development is now entering its third phase and with the launch of the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE) in 2008, the investment in SCORE now stood at RM24 billion with local investors contributing RM5 billion and foreign RM12.3 billion, while the joint- ventures between locals and foreign investors was another RM6 billion, said Awang Tengah.
“Five companies are now contributing RM11.2 billion in investments and giving jobs to 6,800 people,” he said.
For the operational stage, Awang Tengah said there would be job opportunities for 14,000 people, while the construction stage now was already employing some 11,000.
All this was due to the sound policy and good leadership of the Chief Minister, who paved the way for political stability, good security and policies friendly to investors and giving opportunities to locals, he said.
Besides that, he said, Tabung Ekonomi Gagasan Anak Bumiputera Sarawak (Tegas) was also set up to help the people start businesses through small and medium industries as a result of spin-offs from SCORE.
Awang Tengah stressed that this is the type of leadership that requires support to ensure Sarawak’s future would remain bright for the people.