KOTA KINABALU: State Reform Party (STAR) said that it was the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) which didn't want to work with STAR to go for the one-to-one fights in the constituencies.
In response to Desah Chairman, Tan Sri Simon Sipaun, who said that the PR could have obtained eight to 10 seats more had STAR and SAPP listened to Desah's urging for one-to-one fights against the Barisan Nasional, STAR's Chairman, Datuk Dr. Jeffrey said he respected Sipaun's concern but Sipaun had been misinformed about what really happened.
"It is not true that we didn't want to work with the PR. Nothing would be further from the truth," Jeffrey stressed. "On the contrary, it was PR who was not serious cooperating with STAR."
He said that STAR even delivered an official memorandum dated November 12, 2012 to all three components of PR seeking their cooperation for a one-to-one contest in Sabah but received no official response, although discussions were held on the side even to the extent of just almost agreeing on cooperating on 12 parliamentary seats on one-to-one basis against BN.
"STAR believes that the opposition wave that netted PR three parliamentary and 11 State seats was actually due to the efforts of UBF/STAR since December 2010 with the Borneo Tea Parties (BTPs)," Jeffrey said. "With the BTPs we managed to educate Sabahans on the actual history of Sabah in the formation of Malaysia and the dilution and removal of Sabah’s rights and autonomy, and empowered them to re-claim Sabah’s rights and autonomy.
"PR benefited from the sentiments and managed to ride on this wave started by us. PR plagiarized this political ideology and political struggle by adopting it as theirs. They even used our war cry, 'Inikalilah!'"
"The real issue for Sabahans now is which party should be supported by them to lead Sabah out of its current quagmire of internal colonization by Umno/Malaya. These include attendant problems of poverty, loss of oil and other revenues, marginalization of local natives, security problems and the overwhelming by illegal immigrants aided by the Umno/BN government and lack of focus on the development of Sabah," Jeffrey said.
He said STAR remains committed in its fight for the restoration of Sabah’s rights and autonomy as an equal partner in Malaysia, equal to Malaya and Sarawak and its sole Bingkor seat will be the starting platform to show to the people that STAR is the right party to lead Sabah.
"If PR, and for that matter BN, are serious about the autonomy and rights of Sabah (in which the PM Najib had stated that the 20-Points remain intact), they should take immediate remedial actions to demand for the return of Sabah’s rights including the oil rights and revenue and not pay mere lip service and rhetoric in their election campaign to dupe Sabahans into voting for them in the just concluded elections," he opined.
"Since both BN and PR are supposed to be on the same side on Sabah rights, a simple motion to amend the Federal Constitution will restore most of Sabah’s rights and the amendment can be easily carried out since BN and PR control all 222 of the parliamentary seats.
"Furthermore, if the Sabah BN MPs are serious about Sabah’s rights, there is never a better opportunity than now to demand for these rights and etch their names in the annals of history forever. There is no meaning for BN to have a DPM2 if the DPM will be toothless to fulfill the people's aspirations," Jeffrey added. "There is no meaning in additional ministerial posts when the rights for not less than 20% oil isnot given, and the cabotage policy is not scrapped for good."
He said if these Sabah MPs do not demand for these rights in return for supporting and ensuring the BN federal government remains in Putrajaya, then Sabahans should reject and vote out these irresponsible leaders when the opportunity next arises.
"As for Tan Sri Sipaun, his intentions are admirable but he needs to respect the democratic freedom of choice," he said. "While it is ideal to have one-to-one contests, in a democracy, we can't easily avoid multi-cornered fights due to various reasons. Sometimes it is a matter of strategy and not just purely a matter of idealistic planning.
"We can see that in many of the results one-to-one contests wouldn't make any difference to the BN's wins. Imagine, at one time we were offered only few seats by PR to contest, while the PR was to get the lion's share of seats. In such a situation it would have been better for PR just to colonize and takeover Sabah like what Umno/Malaya is doing and let Sabah remain as the 12th state of Malaya and Sabahans continue to be the poorest in Malaysia.
"In fact, I would think that Tan Sri Simon should have supported our proposal that PR concentrate on parliamentary seats and local parties to take the state seats. This would minimized the splitting of the votes and the results would have been better."
Datuk Dr. Jeffrey Kitingan
Chairman STAR Sabah
11 May 2013
