KUCHING, Dec 7: Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) candidate for Kota Sentosa Wilfred Yap Yau Sin urges Democratic Action Party (DAP) to own up to their broken promises instead of making excuses for their failure to deliver on the 20 per cent oil royalty and 50 per cent income tax payments to Sarawak.
Yap who is also Sarawak United Peoples’ Party (SUPP) Kota Sentosa chairman said yesterday, the DAP leadership put out a video in hope that Sarawakians will excuse their actions of renegading on their own offer and promises which was made to the Sarawak people prior to the 14th General Election (GE14).
According to Yap, DAP described the sequence of events that transpired and purported to say that a legitimate or ‘possibly’ binding offer was made to the Sarawak State Government, but the offer was just fluff and a publicity stunt.
“First and foremost, SUPP Kota Sentosa would like to clarify to the public that an ‘offer’ to give someone or any organisation any thing be it money or rights, hinges on the fact that you ‘own’ the said commodity; however DAP was not the federal government at that material time.
“Hence the decision to ignore the offer by the Sarawak government was a prudent one,” he said in a statement today.
Yap reminded Sarawakians that after taking over the federal government in 2018 as part of Pakatan Harapan, DAP had full control of the Finance Ministry, and if they truly fought for Sarawak and did not bend to Malaya, then they would have easily made good on their promises.
He opined DAP could have given Sarawak just a 5 per cent increase of royalty and and 25 per cent of income tax revenue; even though it would have been less then promised, at least it was a step in the right direction.
“Instead DAP actively punished Sarawak and Sarawakians in many ways like cancelling projects, renegotiating contracts and delaying implementation of projects, but the worst was to deny Sarawak our inalienable rights to sales tax and taking Sarawak to court to deny us our rights.
“Sarawak prevailed in court despite their sheer will to stifle us and they continued in this vein for the duration of 22 months that they were in power.
“Since then they have been desperately deflecting the anger of the people. The strategy never worked because the hurt and disillusionment they caused to Sarawakians who wholeheartedly believed them is still fresh,” he added.
Yap also asserted that DAP wants to try their best to deflect blame so that they may not be punished in this elections.
“A leopard never loses its spots and DAP will not stop their way of twisting and turning their words to tell stories only they understand so once again we ask the people of Sarawak and particularly here in Kota Sentosa which have been abandoned by DAP for 15 years to reject this rhetoric politics and give a chance to a working representative who will deliver you service rather than words.
“Kota Sentosa deserves an uplift and a shift to picking a GPS representative makes perfect sense now that we can’t trust the opposition and particularly now that we have been left behind for 15 years,” he said. — DayakDaily
