The opposition is stepping up attacks on Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud in its state election campaign.

The DAP has even produced an animation in which Taib fights with "Ubah", the party's hornbill mascot for the April 16 Sarawak election, with Ubah kicking Taib into the sky at the end.

kuching dap guan eng signing ubah The clip portrays Taib as a bad guy from whom Ubah has come to rescue the people of Sarawak, and is shown before the start of DAP rallies.

"Do you want Taib to continue as chief minister?" asked party secretary-general and Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng at a rally last night at the 101 Commercial Centre in Kuching.

The loud reply from the large gathering was "no".

Lim said he heard that the people of Sarawak were fed-up with Taib and that they wanted him to go.

"Thirty years is enough. It is time for him to step down," he said. "But does he really want to step down in two years' time? The likelihood is that he will not."

At a press conference today, Lim reiterated his call for Taib to step down and said that even SUPP could not guarantee that he would do so.

'Now or never for Taib to step down'

"It is now or never for him to step down," said Lim, who is campaigning for the DAP candidates in Kuching.

He said there were two issues that SUPP had to urgently answer. One is on massive corruption in the state government and second, whether it wanted Taib to remain as chief minister.

An example of corruption committed by the Taib government, Lim said, was the awarding of 269 acres of prime land near the Borneo Development Corporation (BDC) housing estate to a company owned by the children of Taib and SUPP president George Chan for only RM80 million when its market value was around RM500 million.

He said RM1 billion in losses have been incurred by the Sarawak government through various land dealings carried out without the open tender process that was practised by the PR government in Penang.

Lim also took a dig at George Chan for trying to portray himself as a muscular superman, as depicted in billboards in Miri.

"Some years ago, Chan said he wanted to quit, but he is still holding the post of SUPP president and deputy chief minister. By depicting himself as a muscle man, does he think he is still strong at 75 years old?" Lim asked.

He also chided SUPP leaders for saying that there would be no Chinese representation in the state government if all the 19 SUPP candidates were defeated in the election.

"Is not SUPP supposed to be a multi-racial party? In fact, SUPP does not represent the Chinese community nor the other races, but the leaders themselves," he said.

dap kuching nep issue 200807 chong chieng jen Sarawak DAP secretary Chong Chieng Jen ( left ), who was also at the press conference, said SUPP had no right to say it represented the Chinese community as it had even failed to help Chinese contractors get government jobs, which were monopolised by crony companies.

Chong, who is the DAP candidate for Kota Sentosa , said many of the Chinese contractors have become sub-contractors of crony companies.

He said SUPP had also failed to help the Chinese get jobs in the civil service.

"In 1971, the Chinese made up 20 percent of the civil servants in federal departments in Sarawak. But now, this has gone down to just five percent, while for the state departments, the state government has refused to provide the statistics."