All for Love of Sabah: Jeffrey to ditch STAR

(Borneo Insider) – Datuk Dr Jeffrey Kitingan is to move house again. This time the newly-registered Parti Cinta Sabah will become his latest political vehicle, after sojourns – all briefly – in numerous other parties.

Jeffrey (photo) is expected to abandon the Sarawak-based State Reform Party (STAR) which he used in the last state elections, now that PCS has been given the green light to operate.

PCS is led by protem president Dr Nicholas James Guntobon who is his close ally.

The Bingkor assemblyman when contacted Friday said, “Yes we will be moving into Cinta”.

Dr Jeffrey, currently chairman of the STAR Sabah chapter, said they expected to make the transition to the new party by the year end after consulting with his counterparts in STAR in Sarawak.

He explained that he was thinking about moving to Parti Cinta because only Sarawakians could become members of STAR and in Sabah, they could only use the symbol for the elections.

“I will be talking to STAR officials about the development and will leave it to the protem Cinta committee to handle the changes,” Dr Jeffrey said, adding that those in the protem committee were “my people.”

A move to apply for a new party was made in late 2009 at the height of a power struggle between Dr Jeffrey and local Sabah PKR leaders that saw him eventually quitting PKR after the party sacked several of his key men for applying to form a new party.

Parti Cinta failed to be registered before the May 2013 elections and Dr Jeffrey had brought in Sarawak-based STAR by late 2010 after failing to take over some dormant local parties in Sabah.

Dr Jeffrey was the only STAR candidate to win a state seat in the elections while the rest including Dr Nicholas, who contested on a STAR ticket, lost with Pakatan Rakyat winning 11 of the 60 state and three of the 25 parliament seats.

Prior to joining STAR he was with PKR which he dumped in a hurry.