Sarawak Assistant Minister for Sports and Agriculture Dublin Unting Ingkot, 53, passed away at 1.26am today.

He fell into a coma following a stroke in May last year after he gave a radio interview in Kuching and subsequently underwent a three-hour surgery to remove a blood clot in his brain.

He had failed to recover from his coma in the past nine months.

dublin unting Unting was state assemblyperson for Batang Ai, a remote rural constituency in south of Sarawak close to the Indonesia’s West Kalimantan border. It is about 200km east of state capital Kuching.

A vice-president of Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS), Unting was serving his second term as an assistant minister.

As the next state election will not be due until May 2011, the Election Commission will be calling a by-election in the next 60 days in Batang Ai.

Under the election laws, the EC may leave the seat vacant should a state election is due within 24 months. But in the case of Batang Ai, it will be more than two years before the current term of the state assembly expires.

According to Bernama , EC chief Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof has said today that a by-election in Batang Ai is "compulsory" because the term of the present assembly is not even three years.

Pakatan's first test in Sarawak

batang air state seat 240209 Unting defeated Nicholas Bawin Anggat from Sarawak National Party (Snap) in the Iban-majority seat at the 2006 state election.

Unting bagged 3,295 votes against Bawin's 2,489, with a majority of 806.

Bawin has since joined PKR and is the party’s state deputy chief.

The upcoming by-election will be the first test for the opposition Pakatan Rakyat in Sarawak since the March 2008 general elections.

Sarawak, unlike other states, does not hold its state polls in tandem with the general elections.

Its last state election was in May 2006, where the DAP opposition make substantial inroads into the BN stronghold, which is led by long-time Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud from PBB.