The state BN chairman, meaning Chief Minister Adenan Satem, merely endorses names submitted by the component parties.
While as president of Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB), it is really up to Adenan to pick the party’s candidates, it is not for him to decide who should be candidates of component parties like Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS), Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) and Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party (SPDP).
Like Adenan in PBB, the leaders of PRS, SUPP and SPDP, also enjoy the right to pick the candidates of their parties.
BN does not usurp the powers of the leaders of the component parties. Being state BN chairman does not give Adenan the right to decide who should be candidates of PRS, SUPP and SPDP.
Neither does being national BN chairman, it is up to Prime Minister Najib Razak to decide who can or cannot become candidates.
Adenan and Najib merely endorse names submitted by the respective leaders of the component parties.
The procedure is that the component parties, meaning the respective presidents, submit the names of their candidates to the state BN chief, who will send these names to the national BN chairman, who will then issue them with a letter allowing them use of the ‘dacing’ symbol.
This letter not only makes the candidates the official BN candidates but it is also the document that the Election Commission needs to make sure that they are indeed BN candidates.
All this talk of the sole prerogative of the state BN chairman to decide who should be candidates is completely untrue.
There is no such thing as sole prerogative of CM or BN chairman to pick candidates. If he had such a right, why bother having component parties?
Why still have PBB, PRS, SUPP and SPDP? Why Umno, Gerakan, MIC and MCA?
Why? Simply because each party wants to be itself. Each party wants to run its own affairs? Each party is different.
BN is not a party. It is a coalition of parties that believes being together gives them the numbers they need to form the government. No more no less.
Being BN chief therefore does not give a person the right to usurp the powers of the leaders of the component parties, and one such power is the right to pick their own candidates.
No, Adenan does not have the right to decide who should be the candidates of the other component parties as much as Najib does not have the right to decide who MIC, MCA and Gerakan should pick as their election candidates.
Yes, there are party leaders who have been declaring the so-called “sole prerogative of the state BN chairman to pick election candidates”.
These leaders have their own agenda. They have their own selfish reasons, and mostly because they are in no position to name their own party candidates.
It is either that they are not BN members but wanting seats that belong to BN, or they think they are friends of the BN chairman but enemies of the component parties.
And these are the people who created the so-called “sole prerogative” of the state BN chairman. They created that “sole prerogative” hoping that the state BN chairman would use that right to cancel the rights of the component parties!
The so-called “sole prerogative” of the state BN chairman does not exist. Choosing and picking candidates is the sole right of the respective component parties.
It’s up to Adenan to pick who should be PBB candidates as much as it is up to Masing, Dr Sim Kui Hian and Tiong King Sing to pick the candidates of their respective parties.
Anybody who thinks it’s up to Adenan, as the state BN chief, to pick the candidates of his party has to be someone whose party has lost its honour and respect. - The Ant Daily
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