Good performance, on the other hand, can, said Sarawak United Peoples’ Party (SUPP) president Dr Sim Kui Hian.
“The politics of 2017 is not about how much money you have. Money cannot win the 14th general election (GE14),” he said.
Dr Sim – whose party won seven out of the 13 seats it contested in last year’s Sarawak state elections – was speaking to FMT in an hour-long interview at his house in Kuching last weekend.
When asked about his confidence in SUPP’s ability to retain the Chinese votes now that Adenan had passed, Sim said this was where his statement about good performance would come into play.
“Adenan had left us with much more than just a legacy. He also left us with a standard, which I think most of us will find to be quite a challenge (to live up to),” said the Sarawak minister of local government and housing.
“For SUPP, we have been given an opportunity (to lead). So from now on, it’s about how we perform for the people who gave us that chance.
“I am trying my best to lead by example (like Adenan did).
“As I used to work in a heart centre, I now try to transfer some of my management expertise from there, and also try to learn about negotiating through the red tape and bureaucracy.”
Dr Sim was a cardiologist when he entered active politics by contesting the Pending state seat in 2011.
He lost then, but came back with a bang last year when he wrested the Batu Kawah seat from DAP’s Christina Chiew Wang See.
Dr Sim convincingly defeated Chiew, overturning the 543-vote majority she had when she won the seat in the previous state polls, by obtaining a majority of 2,085 votes last year.
Sarawak BN won 72 out of the state’s 82 seats, an impressive success that was largely credited to the “Adenan factor”.
“I think we were very blessed to have had Adenan as our chief minister.
“He was a very astute politician who knew what his priorities were. He didn’t speak much but he listened. He thought about what he’d heard and executed.
“When you sat down with him, sometimes you had to ask if he was listening. ‘I hear better with my eyes closed,’ he would say. But sometimes I think he was actually asleep,” Dr Sim said, before bursting into laughter.
Meanwhile, Sim also shared with FMT his thoughts on the cancelled Pujut by-election, which he said “couldn’t be won with money”.
“We were totally caught unprepared. Even among us (some Sarawak BN assemblymen), we were so stunned by the motion on that morning.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp51mOY2K7M&feature=youtu.be
On May 12, Sarawak’s International Trade and E-Commerce Minister Wong Soon Koh brought a ministerial motion to disqualify DAP’s Pujut assemblyman Dr Ting Tiong Choon from the state assembly.
Speaker Mohd Asfia Awang Nassar approved the motion and announced that 70 of the state assembly members had voted in favour of it on grounds that Ting had allegedly held dual Malaysian-Australian citizenship.
Only 10 members voted against the motion.
The Election Commission (EC) then responded by setting July 4 as the date for the by-election in Pujut.
The Kuching High Court, on June 17, however ruled against the Sarawak state assembly’s decision.