Tiong King Sing takes over as acting SPDP chief after Mawan's shock resignation

DATUK SERI TIONG KING SING

MIRI: Datuk Seri Tiong King Sing is the new acting president of Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party (SPDP) taking over the post late Thursday afternoon.

Tiong, who is Bintulu MP, automatically assumes the acting president post following the sudden announcement by party president Tan Sri William Mawan that he (Mawan) had quit the SPDP to join newly-registered party TERAS.

Tiong assumes the acting president post by virtue of the fact that he was Deputy President during Mawan's tenure and is the second man in line for the top post, said SPDP Youth Chief Robert Ayu.

Ayu, who is also a SPDP Supreme Council member and SPDP vice-president, told The Star that under the party constitution, Tiong will take over the number one post since Mawan had quit.

"The party constitution stipulated that the deputy will be the acting president if the president resigns.

"That will be the status until the party convenes the next general assembly.

"So in this case, with immediate effect, Datuk Seri Tiong will assume the president post until the party general assembly.

"I must say that we are all shocked with the sudden move by Mawan to resign.

"We in the SPDP Supreme Council have not received any written letter of resignation from him.

"We heard about his resignation from the news. This is totally unexpected and it caught us by surprise.

"All along, Mawan had said that he considers the internal problems in SPDP as a family issue and that he will solve it and yet he quitted like this," he said.

Tiong, meanwhile is said to be on official trip elsewhere.

Calls to his mobile phone went unanswered.

Messages sent to his press secretary also went unreplied.

Tiong is the special envoy of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Najib Tun Razak to the far east countries of Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

SPDP Marudi chairman Alexander Asing, in the meantime, said the whole party will support Tiong as caretaker president.

Asing, who is also SPDP Supreme Council member, said that until now, the SPDP had not received any resignation letter from Mawan, nor any hint from him that he would just quit the party.

"We welcome Tiong to the presidency of the party. Hopefully, SPDP will now be able to have peace," he said.

Mawan announced his resignation from SPDP at about 4.30pm yesterday in Kuching.

SPDP is one of four component parties of the Sarawak Barisan Nasional.