The Sarawak United People's Party (Supp) has criticised the DAP in Sarawak saying that it has no outstanding leaders.

"They do not have credible leaders or those with outstanding calibre," Supp president and Deputy Chief Minister Dr George Chan said at a party function in Sibu over the weekend.

He said the most the opposition party leaders could do is shout and make empty talks.

"There is no way those actions can benefit the Chinese community," Chan added.

The Supp leader's recent diatribes against DAP seem to indicate that the state election could be held soon. Supp has been allocated 19, mostly Chinese-majority seats in urban areas, of the 71 that will be contested.

DAP has always been Supp's greatest threat as far as the 15 urban seats are concerned. While results had been close in many of these seats in the last state election, the opposition party only managed to win one seat (Kidurong).

Second fiddle

Chan was quoted by the Borneo Post , now the state's only local English daily, as saying the community should look to China and emulate its rise in becoming one of the super-powers in the world.

"DAP is only making empty noises and not worth for us to emulate," he added.

The Supp leader said party members should look for what he called 'a suitable strategy to hit the DAP at their weakest point, which would vary from constituency to constituency, and to explain the party's roles in government.

In a statement to malaysiakini, Sarawak DAP chairperson Wong Ho Leng said the people had different opinion about Supp's claim they had leaders of high calibre.

"But the fact is their leaders play second fiddle in the state administration," Wong said, adding that Supp leaders do not challenge any government's decision even if it does not benefit the people."

He accused Supp leaders of resorting to too many lies, citing as one example the issue of the University of South Australia and the party leaders making a public announcement that a branch campus would be set up in Sibu.

"I discovered that there was something amiss and wrote to University of South Australia. To my shock, UNISA replied that it has no plan to set up an overseas campus. It also said that there was some wrong reporting!," Wong said.

He claimed that many students had been 'cheated' in enrolling in United College Sibu to be the first batch of students in UNISA Sibu.

"Supp had no answer to this and had to resort to lies. On December 25, 2005 and last night, Supp leaders said that it was because of DAP's letter which portrayed some politicking that UNISA decided not to have a campus in Sibu.'

Wong described all this as "a pack of lies."