Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) will get a chance to field a candidate against Barisan Nasional (BN) in the two predominantly-Chinese state seats of Padungan and Batu Kawah in the upcoming state election, if no other party or independent candidates join the fray.

Sarawak DAP announced this week that it would give way to PKR in the two seats.

Although its state leadership has yet to confirm this, PKR is widely expected to field lawyer Dominique Ng, 43, who contested in Padungan and lost in 1991 and 1996 on a DAP ticket and 2001 on a then Parti Keadilan Nasional ticket.

If nominated, he will take on BN incumbent Lily Yong, who in recent weeks had expressed concern that the Padungan state constituency boundary is being enlarged to include an additional 4,000 registered voters from Pisang Road and Rubber Road.

This will raise the Padungan electorate to nearly 29,000, making it the largest in the state and raising the spectre of a tougher fight for the BN to retain the seat that it has held for many years.

The big chunk of additional voters for Padungan will come from that part of Kuching city where the voting was, to quote an opposition leader, "rather clear cut" in the last parliamentary elections because of frequent floods there.

Ng stood for the parliamentary seat of Bandar Kuching in 1999 and lost, but polled more votes than the DAP candidate Chong Chieng Jen, who also lost. The BN's Song Swee Guan retained the seat.

The BN, however, lost the seat in the parliamentary election last March to DAP's Chong.

Ng, an ordinary PKR member, maintains close touch with state party chief Hafsah Harun and other leaders.

He said the party was grateful to DAP for keeping to its side of the bargain. As part of an opposition pact, Keadilan had agreed to stay away from Bandar Kuching and support the DAP candidate in the last election.

Full term?

There is talk of opposition groups trying to renew their pact to take on the BN and raise their chances of being able to send more opposition elected representatives into the enlarged state assembly.

At present, all but one of the 62 state assemblypersons are BN representatives. The sole opposition state assemblyperson is DAP's Chiew Chin Sing who won Kidurong in the 2001 state polls.

State elections, however, are not due until September 2006, and Chief Minister and state BN chairperson Abdul Taib Mahmud has publicly indicated there is probably no reason for the state government not to sit to the last day of its present term.

But changes to the electoral constituencies raising the number of state seats by eight to 70 and parliamentary seats by three to 31 has prompted opposition's accusation of election gerrymandering and also speculation that state elections may be held earlier than anticipated.

Almost without exception, all political parties have said there should be more state and parliamentary seats for Sarawak.

More Kuching seats

Ng even said the ratio of Sarawak's parliamentary seats, despite being increased from 28 to 31, has in fact fallen from 16.67 percent to 13.96 percent against the total 222 seats in Parliament.

Kuching, which has been left out of the latest re-delineation exercise, should have one additional parliamentary seat and two additional seats, he added.

But those concerns are not stopping political parties on both sides of the camp from making preparations to go down to the ground with their campaigning in anticipation of an earlier state elections.

Ng told malaysiakini that the party is trying to organise a visit to Sarawak for former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim, who is largely seen as PKR mentor and the leading opposition figure outside Parliament.

He said no date has been set but that the visit is intended to give a boost to state PKR supporters whose morale has been badly affected by successive poor electoral performances since the party's debut in Sarawak