Though the euphoria over the good showing in the Sarawak election has quietened down, DAP will soon launch their full-frontal attack on claims that their BN opponents had engaged in vote-buying.

DAP sibu PC wong ho leng, liew chin tong "We are still gathering evidence. We have received a lot of allegations of the irregularities during campaigning and that vote-buying is rampant in many areas, if not almost all the constituencies that DAP has contested in," said state party chairperson Wong Ho Leng ( in photo, sittingin middle ) in a press conference in Sibu this afternoon.

While he said that the party may have trouble looking for statements by witnesses, Wong said that the "price" of votes in the Sibu area is especially high this time in the recently-concluded Sarawak election.

According to him, individuals had been given RM300 each in Dudong, RM500 in his own constituency of Bukit Assek and Bawang Assan and RM1,000 in Meradong.

With the exception of Bawang Assan, DAP had swept through all the other seats in Sibu in the polls yesterday against the SUPP contenders.

"I'm sure that the voters won't receive their balance this time, but this shows the courage of the voters who voted with their conscience," he said.

Firing salvos at SUPP, he said that to date, not one single SUPP leaders has come out to outrightly deny the claims.

"And in their attempts, they just gave very piecemeal and superficial answers," he said.

NONE Yesterday, defeated Bawang Assan candidate from DAP Alice Lau ( far right in photo ) had slammed her opponent, SUPP secretary-general Wong Soon Koh, with vote-buying allegations.

"I did not lose to Wong Soon Koh, I lost to SUPP," she said after being pronounced loser.

'Acid test for BN's 1Malaysia'

Meanwhile, Bukit Mertajam MP Chong Eng ( below, second from right ) who was also present at the press conference said that the onus is now back on the BN government to take care of the welfare of the Chinese people even without electoral support.

"This is an acid test to the BN government to see if the 1Malaysia government can take care of all the rakyat.

dap pc in sibu 170411_alice lau_ting tze fui_chong eng "If just because the Chinese representation in the government is reduced, and that communities are proportionately sidelined by the government, then this is a very racist government," she said.

In the ten-day campaigning period, both SUPP leaders and Sarawak chief minister Abdul Taib Mahmud himself had warned that Chinese representation in the government would be reduced, losing prime positions in the state cabinet and local authority, should the Chinese voters reject SUPP.

SUPP had contested in 19 seats, but managed to retain only six of them. The polls also saw many of the party heavyweights wiped out, including party president and deputy chief minister George Chan who lost the Piasau seat which he had held for six terms.

But despite DAP winning 12 seats out of the 15 that they had contested in, nearly all of their winning candidates are Chinese, clinching constituencies that have clear Chinese-majorities.

Seeing rise in perception that DAP is a Chinese-centric party, the party leadership is also admitting that it was an "area of concern".

"We feel that we have a lot of room to expand (to other communities), and of course, we still need to understand the feelings of our allies in Pakatan. But we have to review this (image) soon," he said.

Wong had also earlier said that the party would be contesting in mixed seats as well in the future.

"We don't want to just target SUPP seats. We vouch to contest in more than 15 seats in the future," he said