Sarawak’s state election is just around the corner after its state legislative assembly was dissolved. However, what has become the people’s concern now is the banning of several opposition leaders as well as state assemblymen from entering Sarawak.

The Universiti Malaya Association of New Youth (Umany) strongly criticises Chief Minister Adenan Satem for banning opposition leaders from entering the state for two reasons.

First, Adenan has abused the immigration autonomy.

Immigration autonomy is granted in order to protect Sarawak’s autonomous power and to ensure the rights of the Sarawak people. Hence, it is rational that immigration autonomy should only be used to ban racial or religious extremists from entering Sarawak, but must not be utilised to ban anyone without any concrete reason in order to achieve the personal agenda of those in power.

As we can see now, immigration autonomy has brought disaster when it is in Adenan’s hands. It has become Adenan’s ‘political tool’ to cordon off Sarawak from individuals who hold different political views and to ensure that only views from one side could be received by Sarawakians. His imperious act has not only restricted Sarawakians’ horizons, but also made Malaysians to have a bad impression on immigration autonomy.

Second, Adenan deploy dirty tactics to win the state election.

Umany also criticises Barisan Nasional (BN) for abusing power and oppress the opposition by any means necessary. In order to defeat opposition and to continue ruling the state, BN has abused the system and power to stifle any dissent.

What the ruling coalition is doing must not be tolerated and forgiven. When the voices of opposition leaders are also being blocked, is it indeed a shame for the ruling coalition to talk about a two-party system and democracy. Such a pathetically dirty tactic creates a totally unfair and unjust environment for the ruling and opposition parties to compete, and makes the state election a joke to both local and foreign media.

Lastly, Umany urges Adenan to retract all bans in order to return a fair and clean election to Sarawak. We also urge every Sarawak people to not restrict your own right to choose despite all malicious acts used by the ruling party. Also, Umany urges every Malaysian to reject Adenan’s act of violating the rule of law and manipulating the system to oppress dissents.