Kit Siang: Pakatan drawing up GE14 action plan for Sabah
BY CLARA CHOOI
ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
KUALA LUMPUR, May 23 — Pakatan Rakyat (PR) is drawing up an action plan to kick off “follow-up campaigns” in Sabah after scoring record wins in Barisan Nasional’s (BN) east Malaysian fortress in the just-concluded May 5 polls, Lim Kit Siang said today.
The Gelang Patah MP said in a statement here that the federal opposition pact was now busy analysing the results of Election 2013 where it took 10 seats from the ruling BN to occupy a total of 11 seats in the 60-seat state assembly.
“DAP and PR leaders are analysing the results of the... general election to draw up an action plan to begin follow-up campaigns to win the hearts and minds of the majority of Sabahans, for the next general election will be a double battle for Ubah — both in Putrajaya as well as the Sabah state government,” he said.
The DAP adviser observed that if the country’s electoral boundaries followed the “one-man, one-vote, one-value” system, PR’s candidates would have done even better in the polls and wiped out BN’s two-thirds majority in the state assembly.
Lim (picture) noted that with 55.78 per cent of the total votes cast for all 60 state seats, or 427,890 votes, BN should have only secured 34 seats instead of 48 seats, which amount to 80 per cent of Sabah’s state seats.
PR parties PKR, DAP and PAS, which had contested all 60 seats in the polls, had secured 248,185 votes or 32.36 per cent of the total votes cast which, Lim said, should have won them 20 seats instead of just 11 seats.
He noted that State Reform Party (STAR) fielded 47 candidates and won one seat by netting 5.63 per cent of the votes cast, while the Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) contested in 41 constituencies and garnered 28,305 votes or 3.69 per cent of votes cast, but did not win a single seat.
Lim said the polls results had been an “expensive lesson” for the Sabah opposition front as although its state assembly representation increased by leaps and bounds, clashes in contests in most seats had cost it at least four parliamentary and eight state seats.
The four parliamentary constituencies were Keningau, Kota Marudu, Pensiangan and Tenon and the eight state seats were Elopura, Melalap, Kundasang, Liawan, Paginatan, Kiulu, Nabawan and Tambunan.
Apart from winning an additional 10 state seats, PR parties also tripled its parliamentary representation from Sabah, winning in an additional two seats — Sandakan and Penampang — apart from retaining its hold on Kota Kinabalu.
In Election 2008, the opposition only scored one state and one parliamentary seat in Sabah, both won by the DAP.
The Election 2013 results saw Sabah BN returned to power in the state with a comfortable two-thirds majority, despite suffering a major dent to its armour.
Lim said the new Sabah state assemblymen will be sworn in on June 13 and the House will meet for its first sitting this year from June 17 to 20.
DAP state secretary and Kepayan assemblyman Dr Edwin Bosi will be DAP’s whip, he added.
