Former PCS leaders join Warisan
KENINGAU: The seven former Parti Cinta Sabah supreme council members have joined Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal in his party’s quest to topple the Barisan Nasional, thus ending speculation that they would be forming yet another opposition party.
One of them, former PCS deputy president Datuk Dr Richard Gunting, who spoke at a gathering in the Liawan constituency late Friday evening, said they chose Parti Warisan Sabah to continue their political struggle as it was the most dominant local opposition party in the State.
In a speech after he and the six others as well as scores of PCS members especially from the interior had handed over membership application forms to Shafie, Richard described the Sabah-based party as having the largest following.
“Realistically we find Parti Warisan Sabah to be the most dominant Sabahbased political party that is able to lead the ‘charge’ for a regime change in the forthcoming elections,” he told a gathering of over 1,000 people mainly from the Meninipir and Patikang polling districts in the Liawan constituency.
Joining Richard at the event were fellow ex-PCS deputy presidents Paul Voon and Dr Nicholas Guntobon, Youth chief Hasmin Azroy Abdullah, information chief Ramdi Indang, as well as supreme council members, Michael Lo, Alex Lai and Michael Jaikul.
According to Richard, a candidate in the 13th general elections where he contested the Pensiangan parliamentary constituency to lose by a majority of 1,744 votes to the winner Joseph Kurup, a change was desperately needed to put Sabah on the right track.
The established regime cannot be changed without a dominant political party winning a majority of the elected seats of the Legislative Assembly in a general election if voters are to be guided by Article 6 (7) of the State Constitution.
He added: “For the purpose of clause (3) of this Article, where a political party has won a majority of the elected seats of the Legislative Assembly in a general election, the leader of such political party, who is a member of the Legislative Assembly shall be the member of the Legislative Assembly who is likely to command the confidence of the majority of the members of the Assembly.”
“Therefore, guided by the above constitutional provision, voters have no choice but to rally behind Warisan if we are sincere about regime change.
“The writing is on the wall,” Richard added, saying that the group jointly decided to join Parti Warisan Sabah unconditionally.
Warisan president Datuk Shafie Apdal was present at the event and after accepting the application forms from the former PCS leaders, he helped them put on the Warisan corporate shirts to symbolise their entry to the party.
Later Friday night, at a ceremony in Penampang, Michael who headed the PCS Moyog division, announced that the division had been dissolved and all its members had agreed to join Warisan.
They handed their application forms to Warisan deputy president Darell Leiking and was witnessed by Paul Voon, who had also indicated that he was joing Warisan’s Penampang division.
Michael, at the ceremony, claimed more PCS members would be ditching the party soon as they were not happy with the leadership, which they claimed had lost direction especially after it signed a pact with Anak Negeri, another KDMbased party.