STARVING THE PEOPLE BECAUSE OF POLITICS?

By : DANIEL JOHN JAMBUN

THE LATEST revelation of problems within Umno Sabah is a cause for worry and dismay for many reasons. If the internal politicking, popularity war and battle for power were just rumours all this while, they have now been revealed to be real-life drama, and revealed not by the opposition, but the Umno leaders themselves. The Battle Royale is the order of the day and at what terrible costs to the people of Sabah!

The revelation by Khairy Jamaluddin and later by Datuk Shafie Apdal and Datuk Rahim Ismail, that there is indeed a cold war going on inside the Sabah Umno, speaks volumes about many shocking realities.

Among these are, Sabah Umno is no longer a solid entity – it is cracking at the seams, Datuk Musa Aman no longer commands the respect and loyalty of the leaders and members of Umno in Sabah, there is intense dissatisfaction with the leadership hence the silent calls for change within Umno Sabah, and there are at least two major groupings or factions in Umno Sabah.

And by the look of it there is no way this factionalism is ever going to be resolved because Kuala Lumpur is most likely to be backing one faction because of the longstanding effort to force a change in Sabah Umno’s leadership.

Umno has learned a lot from what had transpired before and after the recent Sarawak election. Taib was a reason for the BN losses in many areas because the old man has been in the seat too long.

Surely, if not for the constant intimidation, fear, daylight bribery and obvious vote rigging, the election result would have been totally different altogether. This lessons from Sarawak is now possibly being applied to Sabah for many reasons.

The outspoken stance by Rahim Ismail is not new. After the budget presentation by the Chief Minister last year, Rahim questioned the rationale of the state budget, accusing a certain part of it having a reversal in meaning because a liability was factored as an asset–a possible case of creative accounting.

He said, “On the state’s estimated revenue of RM2,747.9 million in 2011 which is less than the estimated RM3 billion for this year, I am interested to learn that the difference in budget for 2010 was due to the state government issuing RM544 million worth of bonds. Please explain why the issuance of bonds is considered as the state's revenue when it is in fact a liability,” (Borneo Post, Nov. 25, 2010).

This request for an explanation was never responded to. The root of this confrontation was Musa’s decision to drop Rahim from the cabinet because Rahim was seen as the main challenge to Musa at one time. So you reap what you saw, the ghost of history comes back to haunt the present.

Shafie on the other hand had long been rumoured to be the main candidate to take over Musa as Chief Minister. But he was out of the reach of Musa’s long and powerful hands because Shafie was and is a Federal Minister.

Perhaps the only way Shafie’s influence could be controlled was by blocking development funds allocated through Shafie to Sabah. With such projects being blocked and not implemented, Shafie could at least be kept in check and have his influence limited among the Umno members in Sabah.

Because of this action, which is unthinkable and shameful, the people are paying a heavy price. It is like what the Malay proverb says: “Gajah sama gajah bergaduh, pelanduk mati di tengah-tengah” (When two elephants start fighting, the mousedeer dies in between them).

Having millions of ringgits of developments fund blocked is clearly a form of cruel betrayal of the people’s trust. It is a case of sabotage of the people’s right to development, an inhuman act which has no mercy or conscience – all done for the sake of power and politics!

Someone should proceed to calculate the losses in monetary terms and seek a remedy for the people who have been denied their development rights. Rahim has said in his letter to the editor last Sunday that the proofs of the sabotage can easily be obtained from the local authorities. As such he and Shafie should reveal the full list of projects which had been blocked. The people have a right to know because those projects were meant for them.

If it’s true then Musa must stand accountable for the detriments to the welfare of the people of Sabah in a saga perhaps without precedence or parallel. If this was happening in the developed countries, the whole thing would have been a full-blown scandal with calls for Musa to take responsibility and resign without delay – all because of the selfishness, immorality and inhumanity of what is being done or not done.

No wonder than that the poverty rate in Sabah has been getting from bad to worse, with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. While development fund is being denied to us, on top of the problem of development funds slashed through unbelievable kickbacks, the people are sinking deeper and deeper into the frightful sinkhole of inflation. Even urban poverty had increased with the already low income earners losing their purchasing power because the frequent increases in commodity prices as a result of the subsidy cuts.

With this sorry man-made economic obstacle, Sabah is certain to miss the opportunity to become a developed state by 2015 as promised by Musa himself. For the same reason the blockage of funds also caused the unseen and incalculable economic spin offs and trickle-down effects.

I find it also quite incredible that Datuk Ewon Ebin as the Minister of Rural Development came to Musa’s defence so fast. Rahim stands by his statement, making Musa’s and Ewon’s denials their words against Rahim’s words which have a strong smell of the truth.

Note that the LDP had raised all sorts of attacks against Musa (beginning with Datuk Chong Kah Kiat’s resignation as Deputy Chief Minister in 2007), there was a quarrel about the Umno Sabah building in which Rahim, as the building committee member was seen as disgruntled (but he later relented saying “As far as Sabah Umno is concerned, I can assure you that everything is above board”), Datuk Marcus Mojigoh made his anti-Musa statement, which was published as a front-page news, lambasting Musa for monopolizing certain projects, and Datuk Dr. Jeffrey Kitingan has made 27 police reports against Musa which the then BPR brushed aside as having ‘NO CASE’.

There is the perception also that the Chief Minister is involved too much in business to be able to perform to his maximum as the state’s top executive, and that his business interests are putting him in a conflict of interests as the Chief Minister.

Obviously, it is not just the opposition who wants a change in the leadership of the state. If even Umno’s top leaders are hopping mad, imagine how the opposition feels about the state of things in Sabah!