Pakatan Rakyat (PR) has officially excluded Sabah Progressive Party
(SAPP) from seat negotiations on Sabah’s opposition front, PKR’s Azmin
Ali has confirmed, insisting the party’s demands are too unreasonable to
accommodate.
The PKR deputy president told The Malaysian Insider that on
the state-level, PR and its new Sabah allies — Angkatan Perubahan Sabah
(APS) and Pertubuhan Pakatan Perubahan Sabah (PPPS) — have nearly agreed
on a seat-sharing formula.
“There are just a few more overlapping seats. But we are now asking
the PR presidential council to guide us in determining which seats
should be contested by which party,” Azmin (picture) said when contacted here, adding that the matter was raised at Wednesday’s political bureau meeting.
But the Gombak MP, who has been leading seat talks with APS and PPPS,
would not reveal PR’s seat-sharing formula with the two Sabah-based
movements for strategic reasons.
APS is led by Tuaran MP Datuk Seri Wilfred Mojilip Bumburing,
formerly the deputy president of Barisan Nasional’s (BN) United
Pasokmomogun Kadazandusun Murut Organisation (UPKO), while PPPS is led
by Beaufort MP and former Umno supreme council member Datuk Seri Lajim
Ukin.
“But SAPP is completely out of the list, out of our formula. I am not
blaming them for anything, simply that their demands are unreasonable,”
Azmin confirmed.
SAPP, a nearly two-decade-old party led by former Sabah chief
minister Datuk Yong Teck Lee, had earlier agreed to collaborate with PR
in Election 2013 to topple BN from its east Malaysian fortress, but has
been insisting that local parties must contest the lion’s share of the
60 seats in the state’s legislative assembly.
Yong said the peninsula-based PR can contest the majority of Sabah’s
25 federal seats to help its bid for Putrajaya but maintained that
administrative power over the state must stay in the hands of parties
with roots in Sabah.
He said that this would be in keeping with the state’s right to autonomy as enshrined in the 1963 Malaysia Agreement.
But Azmin told The Malaysian Insider that Yong’s demand for 40 or even half the state’s 60 seats was unreasonable.
He pointed out that when SAPP contested under BN in Election 2008,
the party had only won two seats in Parliament and two in the state
legislature. SAPP officially withdrew from BN in September 2008 and
became an independent party.
“But they want 40 seats now? Then what is left for the rest of the opposition parties in Pakatan, in APS and PPPS?” Azmin said.
