Home sweet home for Shafie
REALITY: Former Umno veep’s choice may remove him from national scene
FOR former Umno vice-president Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal, being a big fish in the small Sabah pond is more agreeable than being a smaller fish in the larger Malaysian pond.
He has better chances of survival in Sabah as head of a small Sabah party than as a player in national politics, now that he has resigned from Umno, the party that had given him national stature.
Shafie knows this reality all too well.
He told a Hari Raya gathering in Kota Belud on Sunday that he had rejected an offer by former Umno deputy president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin to become the deputy president of a new national party, of which Muhyiddin would be the president.
Shafie told Sinar Harian that he wants to return to Sabah, ostensibly to help and win support from Sabahans but, in reality, to build another career from his Bajau support base in Semporna. It is a much smaller pond to fish, for a man of Shafie’s former stature.
“Tan Sri Muhyiddin approached me regarding the new party and told me, ‘Datuk Shafie Apdal, you will be deputy president and I will be president’. But I said, it’s okay. I am not looking to be a president or deputy president of a party. No need for that.
“Tun (Dr Mahathir) can establish it, Muhyiddin can be the president, and I will support what needs to be supported,” he was quoted as saying in the newspaper.
“It is time for me to balik kampung. I need to help my people.”
His political career was on the rise in Umno, but took a dive after he joined forces with former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad on his journey to unseat Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
Dr Mahathir had pulled in others, notably Muhyiddin and his own son, former Kedah menteri besar, Datuk Seri Mukhriz Mahathir, and Shafie, too.
But their adventure ended in disaster and they were sacked, with Shafie, realising that his career in Umno was over, resigning.
It’s a kind of balik kampung, if you will, to his beloved Semporna, of which he has been member of parliament since 1995.
It is a realistic move for a veteran Sabah leader who had held various portfolios in the national cabinet, the last being minister of rural and regional development.
It was a job that took him all over rural Malaysia and won him wide publicity, as well as fuelled his ambitions to climb even higher.
But Dr Mahathir’s party, which was supposed to bring together all other parties in a grand coalition against Barisan Nasional, is not for him.
The party, too, seems to have lost steam.
Other opposition parties, riddled with their own problems, have decided to adopt a “wait and see” attitude to the new party.
Shafie has been actively touching base with Sabah political leaders since quitting Umno this month.
He made it clear to his supporters that he will lead a new Sabah-based political party and affiliate himself with the United Sabah Alliance (USA), the only opposition coalition in the state.
USA comprises Parti Cinta Sabah led by Datuk Wilfred Bumburing; Sabah Progressive Party led by Datuk Yong Teck Lee and State Reform Party (STAR) under Datuk Dr Jeffrey Kitingan.
They oppose Sabah BN.
However, their performance in the 2013 state election was dismal.
The only opposition party to win was Sabah Pakatan Rakyat (11 seats) and Dr Jeffrey’s STAR (1).
BN won 48 seats.
“It is anathema for Shafie and other ex-Umno leaders to join Pakatan Rakyat, which they have been whacking all this while,” said a Sabah-based journalist.
“The only option open to Shafie is either to go national with Dr Mahathir or go local on his own, even if it is a crowded scene,” he said.
Shafie’s reply is that people had to look for the right party for them.
He plans to highlight Sabah issues, like oil royalties, Native Customary Rights (NCR) land and rural development funds, but by speaking up on local issues, he is likely to disappear from the national scene.
It is a big fall for Sabah’s first Umno vice-president and one of the longest-serving Sabah leaders in the Federal Government.
But that, unfortunately, is the reality of politics, especially when you make a bid for power and lose.
Shafie has fallen back on what he knows — his Bajau lineage and home ground of Semporna — in a desperate bid to stay afloat without a big party platform to back him.
He might threaten Umno’s hold on Semporna, but that ripple is unlikely to go beyond that east coast town.