JPUNS paves Umno’s way in Sarawak

by Churchill Edward
February 8, 2010, Monday

KUCHING: Talks are rife that People’s Progressive Party (PPP) is in the state to pave the way for Umno to come to Sarawak.

But if this may have gone down well with some coffee shop politicians, the group that claims to be the promoters of Umno’s entry into Sarawak, JPUNS, is not amused.

JPUNS pro-tem chairman Affendi Jeman yesterday said no others could claim the role JPUNS had been playing since it was set up on Sept 11, 2006.

He reiterated that from its day of birth JPUNS was to pave the way for Umno’s entry to Sarawak, “no more, no less”.

“PPP is PPP and PPP is not Umno. Umno does not need PPP to pave the way for its entry into Sarawak. PPP moves by itself and I believe Umno is not involved. JPUNS is for JPUNS, it’s in our name,” he said through SMSes yesterday.

Affendi further said: “JPUNS already has a sizeable number of supporters waiting. This was proven by JPUNS not long ago when it successfully registered about 70,000 supporters in the short period of less than a year when we told people we are here to clear the way for Umno to come in. Therefore, it is very clear that JPUNS is the voice of the people of Sarawak who want Umno to spread its wing here.”

Affendi was responding to speculations that JPUNS, PPP and several other organisations are preparing the ground for Umno’s entry into Sarawak despite top Umno leadership’s assurances that the party was not interested as the state BN lead by Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB) was capable of running the state.

Affendi is pro-tem president of a yet-to-be-registered party that calls itself as ARBS, seen by many as another of Affendi’s brainchild after JPUNS did not seem to bring him any where.

In fact, JPUNS has been in the backwaters since Affendi set up ARBS in May 2009, thus it came as quite a surprise when he came out strongly when words were flying around that PPP was doing the very thing inactive JPUNS had done.

In any case, whether JPUNS or ARBS or PPP, all are being frowned upon by the state BN leaders, who see them as unnecessary extra baggage coming to confuse Sarawakians.

Indeed some BN leaders have totally rejected their emergence in the state, saying they had come uninvited while others see parties like PPP a peninsula-based snob with the big talk of attracting 100,000 members while established state parties like Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party (SPDP), an eight-year-old multi-racial party with wide support in both rural and urban areas, could register around 80,000 members to date.

The coffee shop political speculations that PPP is paving way for Umno has been further compounded by the fact that even a national news agency and newspapers are not interested in doing the follow-ups on the issue and that a personal assistant of a certain deputy minister and Umno supreme council member had reminded a reporter in Miri, who wanted to ask about PPP, not to ask the deputy minister anything on ‘politics’.