By : QUEVILLE TO
BELIEVES
.....Former Sabah Chief Minister Yong Teck Lee believes KL politicians are
'shrewd and manipulative' and have no qualms about lying to achieve a hidden
agenda.
KOTA KINABALU: The reality
about Sabahans is that they have always been “too nice” and that translates as
‘naïve’, says former Sabah chief minister Yong Teck Lee.
Yong is fighting to get his
Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) in front of the pack of political parties
targeting voters here ahead of the general election expected in the next few
weeks.
In an appeal to Sabahans to
take their destiny into their own hands, Yong recently urged voters to reject
the politics of Peninsular Malaysia and take back their state.
The SAPP leader, who is
facing a formidable task of uniting Sabahans in favour of his autonomous
outlook for the state, told a large gathering at a political talk on Tuesday
that voters in the state must grab the chance to free themselves.
He’s worried the naivety of
Sabah people, despite being abominably dominated throughout their history by
the power politics emanating out of the peninsula, will work against them.
Yong cited how the late
Abdul Razak, the father of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, had persuaded the
late OKK Sodomon Gunsanad to change his hostile stance towards Malaya back in
1963.
This was achieved, he said,
by the simple act of visiting Gunsanad at his house. This visit deeply touched
Gunsanad as revealed by Najib himself when he visited the landmark in Keningau
during the last Harvest Festival.
Gunsanad’s case, he said,
was a reflection of Sabahans’ true nature of being too nice and easily
hoodwinked by others.
“Sabahans are just too nice
and friendly, and that’s the problem with Sabah today,” he said, pointing out
the manipulation of naive local politicians by the Malayan politicians when the
latter wanted to take over the state’s oil wealth in the 1960s.
Since then, he added,
Malayan politicians had been playing the game of “divide-and-rule” by pitting
one ethnic Sabah politician against another.
“KL’s agenda is always to
divide and rule Sabah; Manusia pun dia, hantu pun dia (He is man and also
ghost). While they make us fight among ourselves, they rob and steal from us,”
he said.
Sabahans, he said, will get
a chance to show that they mean business in the coming general election by
depending on themselves and their own local parties to chart their future.
KL politics
Yong explained that this was
the very reason behind SAPP’s not joining the peninsula-based national
opposition front Pakatan Rakyat.
“(It is so that we can) end
the continuous manipulation and exploitation of Sabah and its rich natural
resources; the people of Sabah must rise up and fight to regain full political
autonomy for the state.”
The former chief minister
whose party was once in the ruling BN coalition painted Malayan politicians as
“shrewd and manipulative” and with no qualms about lying to achieve a hidden
agenda.
“This is KL politics. When
they need you, they will even go to your house or invite you to their house for
lunch and even serve you personally,” he said.
He cited how then prime
minister Ahmad Abdullah Badawi did exactly this after he learnt that SAPP
planned to cast a vote of no confidence against him two months after the 2008
election and that Yong had met with opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim two weeks
earlier.
Yong said that he was candid
with Abdullah about his leadership.
“I made sure that Pak Lah
knew about our intentions [to reject his leadership] when he invited us to his
home for lunch.
“This is so that we were not
misunderstood as ‘tikam belakang’ (back stabbing) like the PBS withdrawal from
Barisan Nasional in 1990.
“It was dubbed back stabbing
by [Dr] Mahathir [Mohamad] because PBS leader [Joseph] Pairin [Kitingan] was
nice and friendly to him when both campaigned in Sabah in 1990, but PBS
abruptly left BN after Mahathir had gone back to KL,” he said.
Yong also revealed that he
repeatedly made it clear to Anwar in 2008 that SAPP would not be joining
Pakatan as it would mean giving up its agenda of restoring political autonomy
for Sabah.
“Finally, he [Anwar]
understood and agreed with SAPP’s stand and that’s the reason why until today
he never insisted that SAPP must join Pakatan Rakyat,” said Yong.
He hoped his explanation
would put to rest allegations against him by some Pakatan leaders, especially
those in Sabah DAP, who he said had been going around saying that the reason
why SAPP refused to join the opposition coalition was because it planned to
rejoin BN.
Yong also asked the
coalition leaders to explain why Sabah was not on the list of the seven states
it expected to win. “If not confident of winning [in Sabah], why contest?” he
asked. (FMT)
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