Parti Rakyat Sarawak pushes back against GPS seat allocation plans, demanding more constituencies in Dayak heartlands.
KUCHING: The competition over Sarawak’s 17 newly created state constituencies is intensifying from within, with Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) publicly declaring that its expected allocation of just three of the new seats is inadequate — and demanding a larger share, particularly in the Dayak-majority heartlands of the state.
PRS is one of four component parties in the ruling Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) coalition, alongside Parti Pesaka Bumiputra Bersatu (PBB), Sarawak United Peoples Party (SUPP) and Progressive Democratic Party (PDP).
PRS Supreme Council member Andy Lawrence issued a statement saying the party had gathered information suggesting GPS intends to allocate only three of the 17 new seats to PRS — a figure he described as falling well short of what the party deserves based on its electoral track record.
“Our PRS track record shows that our party has won every seat we contested in during each of the last two Sarawak state elections. We delivered every seat, and those seats are mostly in the Dayak majority heartlands in Sarawak,” Lawrence said.
“That is not enough. We want more seats, especially in the Dayak heartlands,” he added.
The statement marks a notable moment of public dissent within GPS, whose component parties have broadly presented a united front since the coalition’s formation. With state elections widely expected to be called as early as after the Gawai Dayak festivities in June, the pressure to finalise seat allocations is mounting rapidly.
The internal tussle unfolds against a backdrop of growing external scrutiny over how the seat expansion was carried out in the first place. The Dewan Undangan Negeri (Composition of Membership) Bill 2025, which raised Sarawak’s state constituency count from 82 to 99, was tabled and passed at a special one-day sitting of the State Legislative Assembly on July 7, 2025.
PBB information chief Datuk Seri Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah, who is also Sarawak’s Minister for Tourism, Creative Arts and Culture, had defended the process at a press conference the previous day, insisting the Bill was passed through correct procedures with near-total majority support and was consistent with Article 113(2) of the Federal Constitution, which permits electoral boundary reviews after eight years. He also denied that GPS had begun dividing the new seats among coalition partners.
That denial now appears at odds with Andy Lawrence’s public statement, which explicitly references information gathered by PRS about the internal seat allocation exercise already underway.
Beyond the intra-coalition friction, five civil society organisations — Rise of Social Efforts Sarawak (ROSE), BERSIH, ENGAGE, Tindak Malaysia and Project Stability and Accountability Malaysia (SAMA) — have jointly raised concerns that the seat creation process was rushed, lacked public consultation, and was designed to entrench GPS’s grip on power rather than improve democratic representation.
The coalition noted that the 17 new seats have yet to receive Parliamentary approval, and that the Election Commission has not formally commenced the redelineation process for Sarawak’s existing electoral boundaries.
They urged the EC to conduct any future redelineation exercise with full transparency and in genuine consideration of population size, geographic spread and ethnic composition.
GPS currently holds 80 of the 82 existing state seats, with the remaining two — Padungan and Pending — belonging to Sarawak DAP. The current State Assembly term expires on December 18, 2026.
The Sun Malaysia
