UPP president Wong Soon Koh, who is the state’s Second Finance Minister, said the UPP leaders would deliberate on the matter at the party’s central committee meeting in November.

Borneo Post Online quoted sources saying that senior leaders of both parties have already held talks on a possible merger to sort out “problems of a technical nature”, which may take some time.

The idea of a merger came less than a week after the Sarawak state election in May, when SPDP openly invited UPP, a splinter party of another BN component, SUPP, to discuss the possibility of a merger.

This was after the SPDP Supreme Council agreed to the merger at an emergency supreme council meeting, in which it also extended an open invitation to another pro-BN party, Teras.

Teras is a splinter party of SPDP, having been formed by then SPDP President William Mawan after an internal crisis in 2014.

Mawan has since quit Teras to stand as a BN direct candidate in the May 7 election and remains partyless, but has in recent times said he was open to rejoining SPDP.