Will Dr Kelvin Yii be taking on his old rival Kho Teck Wan in GE15?
WILL Democratic Action Party’s (DAP) Bandar Kuching incumbent Dr Kelvin Yii be taking on his old rival Kho Teck Wan from Sarawak United Peoples’ Party (SUPP) again in the 15th general election (GE15)?
DAP Sarawak announced Sunday night that Yii will be defending the parliamentary seat in this election. The announcement came as no surprise given his performance in the last five years.
However, neither SUPP nor Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) has announced its candidate, although the Kuching, Pending and Batu Lintang SUPP branches have submitted their recommended candidates to the party’s central leadership for consideration.
Reliable sources have it that Kho, who is SUPP women chief, is one of three names submitted and she was recommended by SUPP Pending branch.
She contested as a greenhorn for Bandar Kuching on a Barisan Nasional ticket in 2018 and was defeated by Yii in his first election victory by a whopping 35,973-vote majority. Yii garnered 48,548 votes.
The other two potential SUPP candidates, sources say, are Sih Hua Tong and Eric Tay Tze Kok, recommended by the Batu Lintang branch and Kuching branch respectively.
Sih is not an unfamiliar name for many Kuchingites as he has contested unsuccessfully in three elections for the Batu Lintang state constituency. Tay, meanwhile, is a new face.
Talk is rife that Kuching South Mayor Datuk Wee Hong Seng might also be in the running to be the GPS Bandar Kuching candidate, although it is learnt that the SUPP Pending branch vice chairman’s name is not in the list of proposed candidates.
Nonetheless, the possibility of GPS fielding Wee in the predominantly-Chinese seat cannot be ruled out since the state ruling coalition’s focus is on winnability.
He contested on the GPS ticket for Padungan in the state election last year and lost, but managed to reduce DAP’s majority to 1,198 votes in a four-cornered fight that was won by the opposition party’s state chairman Chong Chieng Jen.
It is widely believed that among the reasons why Wee lost in the polls was because SUPP Kuching branch had pulled its support due to disagreements over his candidacy. Thus to win in GE15, he will need all the support he can get.
Besides Padungan, GPS also lost in Pending and Batu Lintang – the three seats that make up Bandar Kuching.
However, the reduced vote majority for the opposition in all three seats at the conclusion of the state election last December has been seen as an indication that support is growing among Chinese voters for SUPP and GPS.
In Pending, DAP’s Violet Yong won by a 540-vote majority compared to 5,012 in the 2016 state polls.
And in Batu Lintang, See Chee How won on a Parti Sarawak Bersatu (PSB) ticket with a razor-thin margin of 93 votes compared to 4,385 in 2016. See has since left PSB to be an Independent assemblyman.
Indeed, Bandar Kuching is a much prized seat in Sarawak seeing that it is where the state capital is situated and DAP has represented the constituency more times than the ruling coalition.
The late Sim Kwang Yang, current state DAP chief Chong Chieng Jen and Yii have been the MP for seven terms in total, compared to five by BN or SUPP.
The last BN MP was Datuk Song Swee Guan, who after serving two terms lost the seat to Chong in 2004.
On the outside, Bandar Kuching certainly seems like DAP’s stronghold but nobody can be certain what is brewing under the surface, especially with the fall of the Pakatan Harapan-led (PH) government in February 2020, just 22 months after the coalition wrested Putrajaya from BN in the 2018 polls.
Let’s also not forget that a lot has changed in Sarawak politics since the 2018 polls – BN is no longer in control. GPS is the new ruling state coalition and Nov 19 will be its first national election.
As such, GPS has much to prove in the coming polls and winning Bandar Kuching may just be what the coalition needs to do to show that it has indeed arrived.
Still, a determining factor in this election will be the voter turnout, and it is worth noting that the 12th state election recorded quite a low turnout, with a little over 60 per cent of the eligible voters casting their votes amid worries of the spread of Covid-19.
Given the low voter turnout in the last state polls, it is indeed hard to tell whether voters in Bandar Kuching have truly embraced the new state ruling coalition.
Therefore, if this general election continues to see low voter turnout, and if the outcome of the last state polls is any indication, GPS could very well win Bandar Kuching but only if the ruling coalition picks the right candidate.
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