A DAP ceramah in support of its candidate Voon Lee Shan for the Stampin parliamentary seat was forced to be called off last night at the last minute after the PA system contractor was allegedly threatened.

"About two hours before the ceramah was scheduled to start at 7pm (at Kota Padawan, about 16km out of Kuching City) gangsters threatened our PA system people, warning they would smash up their equipment," state DAP secretary and Kota Sentosa state assemblyperson Chong Chieng Jen told Malaysiakini .

He said the PA system contractor grew scared and withdrew. "It was then too late for us to find a substitute, so the ceramah had to be called off."

chong chieng jen Chong, who is defending his Bandar Kuching parliamentary seat, was due to speak at the ceramah together with the party's candidate for Stampin and another party leader.

He said Voon, 62, who is also the state assemblyperson for Batu Lintang (one of three state constituencies in Stampin) lodged a police report on the spot when the police turned up on being informed of what had happened.

Voon himself is a former senior police officer before he retired and took up legal practice and entered politics.

BN-SUPP's Yong Khoon Seng, now into his fourth term, is defending the seat. He is the also Works Ministry parliamentary secretary and a Supp vice president. He was not immediately available for comment.

Feeling the heat

Meanwhile, Chong pointed the finger at SUPP supporters, describing it as a sign that DAP rivals were feeling the heat.

He also expressed disappointment that although the enforcement unit from the Election Commission turned up after being informed, an officer said there was nothing much she could do as her job was only to make sure a police permit had been obtained for the ceramah.

Stampin is a three-cornered fight involving also PKR's See Chee How.

In a PKR ceramah last night, PKR chief Dominique Ng also lashed out at Chong for refusing to work together with PKR.

Observers said the split in opposition votes will be advantageous to BN's Yong. However, they are also not ruling out an upset because of some discernible trend in urban voting following the results of the last state elections in May 2004.

In the state elections, the opposition took all but one of the five Chinese-majority seats in Kuching - DAP three (Pending, Batu Lintang and Kota Sentosa) and PKR one (Padungan).

The BN managed to keep Batu Kawah which has a large number of non-Chinese voters.