BN CAN’T HANDLE THE ‘INCONVENIENT TRUTH’

By: SAPP MEDIA

SABAH Progressive Party (SAPP) has urged UMNO leaders to stop its cowardice act of constantly making use of the government machinery like the police and oppressive law like the Internal Security Act (ISA), to suppress freedom of speech in the country, Sabah in particular.

This was especially when the speech made contained ‘inconvenient truth’ that the present regime refused to accept, for reasons best known to it.

SAPP Information Chief Chong Pit Fah even cautioned the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional (BN) government of the potential dire consequence of such an repressive act, by citing the popular quote by the 28th President of the United States of America, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: “The seed of revolution is repression.”

He was responding to a police report lodged by an UMNO leader in Tawau on former Suhakam vice chairman, Tan Sri Simon Sipaun over his statement that life in Sabah was better prior to joining Malaysia in 1963, they considered to be offensive besides creating confusion among the people.

The police report was made based on Sipaun’s closing remark delivered at the inter-party dialogue cum leadership seminar organised by United Borneo Front (UBF) here last Saturday.

The said UMNO Tawau leader also called Sipaun to retract the statement by contending that the situation in Sabah was far much better before independence.

“Instead of constantly suppressing the people’s right to speak and to highlight issues affecting the country using all kinds of high-handed tactics, UMNO leaders should learn to confront criticisms more intelligently and rationally by discussing and debating over it,” Chong contended.

He thus challenged UMNO leaders in the State to point out which part of Sipaun’s statement that were found to be offensive and creating confusion among the people.

Chong who was present during the dialogue cum seminar maintained that Sipaun who is also a former State Secretary was merely speaking the truth based from his own experiences.

“This clearly shows that the BN government, UMNO in particular can’t handle the truth and are constantly in denial mode. We want to challenge the Sabah BN leaders, particularly Tan Sri Joseph Pairin Kitingan who is the longest serving minister in Sabah to deny and at the same time point out which part of Tan Sri Simon Sipaun’s speech is instigating in nature,” he challenged.

Chong who is also SAPP Kepayan Chief further said if none of the Sabah BN and UMNO leaders could explicitly point out the wrong facts and instigating remarks in Sipaun’s speech, they ought to publicly apologise to Sipaun.

Failing which, he said this would only reflect on their sheer arrogance, ignorance and disrespect to the history of this country, especially the scarifications and contributions of Sabah in forming the Federation of Malaysia back in 1963.

He also urged the public to listen to Sipaun’s full speech which SAPP has since uploaded onto its web TV sabahtv.net, to judge for themselves whether it was really confusing and instigating in nature.