How will Sabah’s teeming Opposition work together?
(MMO) – What is certain is that despite the grand motions and unified voice to fight for autonomy, the Opposition parties’ hopes of deposing BN will be futile if they cannot now achieve the unity that they have never managed before.
Already a crowded space, Sabah’s Opposition is close to bursting with new and proposed local-based parties about to enter the arena.
They are diverse, but they share — or at least profess to share — two common points: the Sabah for Sabahan platform and a desire to unseat the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition.
While the first point is essentially freeform, the second is significantly more complex. They will need not only to work with one another — which history has shown to be an elusive goal — but also with the outsider that is Pakatan Harapan.
At the moment, the most established of the homegrown are the United Sabah Alliance (USA) headed by Datuk Dr Jeffrey Kitingan of Sabah Reform Party, Datuk Wilfred Bumburing of Parti Cinta Sabah, and Datuk Yong Teck Lee of Sabah Progressive Party.
Soon, they will be joined by former Umno president Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal who will rebrand a local party, and Datuk Lajim Ukim, formerly of Umno and PKR, who will establish a new one.
All parties have indicated a willingness to work with the others on the “local platform”, with Lajim saying it was easier to negotiate with a Sabah-based party compared to national ones, though the reality of this has still to be tested.
Kitingan, a former PKR vice president, said the most logical approach would be to carve up Sabah and distribute this based on each party’s apparent strength.
