Time for a Dayak to lead Snap, says Tinggom
One of Sarawak National Party's (Snap) most senior leaders said today he feels it should be a Dayak's turn to lead the party as there are now competent young leaders and professionals to take over the leadership.
Speaking at the start of a highly-controversial extraordinary general assembly meeting (EGAM) to elect new party leaders, Snap deputy president Peter Tinggom, 78, said the situation today is different from the past as there are many young professionals from the Dayak community in Snap who are in the position to articulate the hopes and aspirations of the community.
Although it professes to be multi-racial, Snap draws its strength basically from the rural communities — particularly Iban, Bidayuh and Orang Ulu.
This has always been reflected in the profile of its elected representatives. Today, out of its six state assemblypersons, only one is non-Dayak bumiputra (Richard Wong of Limbang) and of the four members of parliament, only one is non-Dayak bumiputra (Tiong King Sing of Bintulu..
Newly-elected Snap president William Mawan said today at the EGAM that he now sees a trend in more and more young professionals joining the party.
Tinggom, a former deputy federal minister and presently the member of parliament for Saratok, told some 400 delegates and observers at the EGAM in Kuching that when he was still in government service in the days before Malaysia he had told many Dayak leaders that Sarawak was still not ready for independence.
Senior Dayak civil servant
And independence came earlier than he had expected, and there were so few Dayak graduates at the time.
The first post-Independence chief minister Stephen Kalong Ningkan was from Snap, but because of the politics of the day he served less than three years, and Snap found itself after that in the opposition until it joined the Barisan Nasional in 1976.
Tinggom, one of Sarawak's most senior Dayak civil servants before he retired to join politics, said a young Dayak leader Leo Moggie failed in 1981 when he tried to challenge James Wong for the post of president.
(Moggie and his group later left to form Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak).
According to Tinggom, the late Edward Jeli, a former state minister and one-time long-term state assemblyperson for Marudi, was supposed to take over as Snap president in the early 1990s after Wong had indicated he wanted to stand down.
He, Edward Jeli and Dr Patau Rubis were to meet in Wong's house to discuss the matter on the eve of the party elections. But Patau was not present.
"From that moment, I had my doubts he (Wong) really wanted to step down."
Recently, Wong said he was not going to stand down in spite of his age because, in his own words, he could not find someone worthy to take over from him.
Make no apology
Tinggom told the delegates and observers that "we don't have to apologise for whatever decisions we make today". There was a loud applause as he said this.
He referred to a statement made by Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad when opening a special conference on the position of the indigenous groups of Sarawak and Sabah in Kuala Lumpur earlier this year.
According to him, Mahathir said the ethnic groups in Sarawak and Sabah had been given extra privileges to help them develop economically."We will help you but you have to help yourselves."
"It's more than enough for me to say all this as you can see four yourselves the professionals we already have in Snap today."
Whatever decisions taken were only aimed to strengthen the party and making it a worthy member of the Barisan Nasional in Sarawak and Malaysia.
"If it was a different story in 1981, now is the time to put things right," Tinggom said, reinforcing his point about the need for a new and younger leader from the community to lead Snap.
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