SIBU: Will Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) president Datuk Joseph Salang Gandum contest the Julau seat in the 15th general election (GE15) and help wrest the constituency back for Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS)?
It depends.
Salang said if GPS coalition members felt he was eligible to contest they might nominate him.
“The date for the GE15 is still unclear, hence what can be done is to only plan for it. We can plan for it but we don’t know when the GE15 will be held. And we won’t know if we will be in good health or not.
“We probably might be caught up in certain constraints. Hence, I would not dare to say if I would compete even if the coalition thinks that I am suitable for the seat; I will have to reassess whether I want to compete or not,” he told reporters at a dinner in conjunction with the party’s Triennial Delegates Conferences (TDC) on Sunday (April 24).
Prior to GE14, Salang was the incumbent for the Julau parliamentary seat since 1999.
However, in the 2018 general election, the then deputy foreign minister lost to Independent Larry Sng Wei Shien in a straight fight.
Sng, a former Sarawak Workers Party lawmaker who served two terms as Barisan Nasional (BN) state assemblyman for Pelagus from 2001 to 2011, defeated the four-term Salang by a 1,941-vote majority.
Since that defeat, Salang has not been elected either as a state assemblyman or an MP.
