By Chok Sim Yee

PH, Warisan unwilling to negotiate – Yong

KOTA KINABALU: United Sabah Alliance (USA), or Gabungan Sabah, has offered to contest state seats only and would leave the parliamentary seats to Pakatan Harapan (PH) and Parti Warisan Sabah (Warisan) if they agree not to field their candidates in state constituencies.

However, USA deputy president Datuk Seri Panglima Yong Teck Lee said neither PH nor Warisan were willing to negotiate on this matter.

Yong, who is also president of Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP), said that USA could work with peninsular-based opposition parties if they agree to only vie for parliamentary seats in Sabah and leave the state seats to USA.

“This includes Warisan as well. Warisan says they are not a part of PH when the opposite is true. Warisan is the Sabah branch of Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (PPBM),” he said in an interview here yesterday.

USA comprises SAPP, Parti Harapan Rakyat Sabah, Parti Perpaduan Rakyat Sabah (PPRS) and Parti Solidariti Tanah Airku (STAR). Parti Cinta Sabah (PCS) led by Datuk Seri Panglima Wilfred Bumburing left the alliance recently.

Yong said both PH and Warisan had refused to discuss on the possibility of working together.

He said Warisan president Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal had contacted him through a representative, Datuk Kalakau Untol, on the possibility of cooperation after Shafie was sacked from the federal cabinet.

“That was after he left Umno and before he formed Warisan,” he said.

He said Shafie was confident of winning 16 Umno seats but his condition to USA, which then comprised SAPP, STAR and PCS, was for him to become the Sabah Chief Minister. Yong said USA had agreed to Shafie’s condition.

“But once Shafie had formed Warisan, all these went out of the window,” he said.

Now that a pact with PH and Warisan is not in the horizon, Yong said USA would contest both parliamentary and state seats.

“We will stand in all the state seats in Sabah,” he stressed.

He said SAPP had actually discussed about reaching such agreement with the then de facto leader of Pakatan Rakyat (PR), Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, back in the 13th general election (GE13) in 2013, but the opposition coalition ended up contesting in both parliamentary and state seats.

He said the peninsular-based opposition coalition also could not achieve a consensus where SAPP contested two-thirds of the state seats and PR stood in two-thirds of the parliamentary seats in Sabah.

In fact, Yong said SAPP had even campaigned its supporters to vote for the PR candidate in Kota Kinabalu parliamentary constituency and SAPP in Likas, Luyang and Api-Api in GE13.

“I myself voted for Jimmy Wong (PR-DAP) for the Kota Kinabalu parliamentary seat,” he said.

Hence, he said the votes Wong garnered were about 4,000 more than the three state seats under Kota Kinabalu parliamentary constituency combined as these votes came from SAPP.

This time round, Yong said PPBM president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin had offered Warisan to contest 60 percent of the state seats and PH 40 percent.

“But Warisan did not accept the offer,” he disclosed.

Asked if several opposition parties contesting would split the votes and affect USA’s chances, Yong said he had made this point since 2013. He hoped that PH chairman Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad would split Umno’s votes in West Malaysia while Sabah would be left to USA.

If USA achieved victory in Sabah, Yong said Mahathir, being a practical man, would surely want to work with USA.

“When that happens, he will want to support us and not the other way round,” he reasoned.

Yong also believed that SAPP and USA’s struggle for autonomy would materialize one day.