I’m ready for the bell to ring, says Bung Moktar

KOTA KINABALU: Controversial Kinabatangan MP Datuk Seri Bung Moktar Radin is ready to defend his seat for a fifth term.

“Once the time comes for the general election, it is all systems go,” said the Barisan Nasional lawmaker, who won the seat in 1999.

“My preparations are going very well.

“To be honest, I’m just waiting for the bell to ring,” he said.

Bung said his 4,000-strong Kinabatangan Barisan machinery was ready and prepared.

In 2013, Bung won the seat with a 9,731-vote majority against PKR’s Abdullah Abdul Sani.

Bung polled 13,377 votes against Abdullah’s 3,646.

The four-cornered fight also saw Sabah STAR’s Yambuya Parantis getting 1,153 votes and Independent Ali Latip Taha settling for 1,130 votes.

On the Sabah government’s request for a redelineation exercise to add extra parliamentary seats, Bung said it would be a good move.

In Kinabatangan, which was big- ger than the size of Pahang, said Bung, it would be sufficient to have two MPs.

Bung said there were more than 100,000 people in Kinabatangan with about 30,000 voters.

On Thursday, The Star reported that the Sabah government submitted a request to the Federal Government to allow a redelineation exercise to be carried out in the state’s parliamentary seats.

This follows the increase of state seats here in 2016, when Sabah amended the state constitution. The state seats went from 60 to 73.

However, Parliament had yet to approve it ahead of GE14, raising questions whether the 13 new seats would be used at GE14.

Bung said the Sabah government decided to wait and roll out the new state seats together with the new parliamentary seats in order to maximise the impact.

“If we went ahead with just the state seats now, the changes will not be very apparent. So, we decided on new parliamentary boundaries too,” he said.