SUPP gets support in spirit of BN comradeship

Dr Rundi, who is also Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB) secretary-general, said he concurred with Chief Minister and state BN chairman president Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud's statement yesterday that SUPP needed to show unity besides working with all BN component parties, including PBB as the lynchpin of the Sarawak BN.

"In the spirit BN comradeship, I concur with the chief minister's stance on the matter," he told Bernama here.

SUPP president Datuk Seri Peter Chin had said that Taib, who is also PBB president, had given his commitment that PBB would support SUPP in any way it could in the general election during the former's Chinese New Year open house in Miri.

The embattled party, which was advised to work extra hard to get Chinese voters' support, was also asked to work closely with all BN component parties to ensure a total BN victory.

In the 2008 general election, SUPP, which contested in seven parliamentary constituencies, lost the Bandar Kuching parliamentary seat to the DAP besides being defeated again during the Sibu parliamentary by-election two years later.

Asked if the youths as newly registered voters or the rural voters, who were traditionally pro-BN, would be considered as "fence-sitters" in determining the outcome of the polls this time around, Dr Rundi was confident that they would throw their support behind BN.

This was despite the opposition propaganda, including attempts to penetrate the rural populace through clandestine radio stations that operated from abroad to discredit the state government.

"We hope that our policy will be read and understood well by these groups," he said, obviously referring to the various socio-economic transformation programmes being implemented by the government as an on-going initiative to upgrade the people's living standards by leaps and bounds.