By News Editor
KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah state government is intact and functioning, says Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal amid alleged attempts to overthrow the current administration under Parti Warisan Sabah.
The Chief Minister urged people to remain calm and continue on with their everyday lives, and said that there was no need to listen to such claims and rumours.
“We are still here as a government. In fact, such talk of this government going to be toppled started since day one when we took over, ” said Shafie, who is also Warisan president, on Friday (July 24).
He said state leaders were trying their best to make sure that the welfare of the people was being taken care of, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic and it was unfortunate that there were continuous attempts to disrupt the state’s stability.
On Sabah STAR president Datuk Dr Jeffrey Kitingan’s allegations that Warisan was “hiding” its elected representatives to keep them from leaving, Shafie asked why should he.
“I don’t micromanage my people on the ground. Why do I have to hide people? They have families to care for and they are walking about freely, ” he said.
He said Jeffrey was accusing him of such things but who are the ones locking up and harassing people?
Citing an example, Shafie said he did not hide nor threaten Kuala Penyu assemblyman Datuk Limus Jury and Datuk James Ratib of Sugut when they decided to leave Upko to support the Perikatan Nasional government.
He said talk of the Opposition bloc trying to lure state assemblymen to support them needs to be thoroughly investigated.
“We want to know who are these agents or representatives coming to visit and trying to lure assemblymen, who are behind them and who gave them the orders?” he asked.
Shafie said the authorities must get to the bottom of this matter as there were laws to abide by and deemed such actions as unethical, uncalled for and useless.
On his visit to see the head of state Tun Juhar Mahiruddin on Friday morning, he said such visits were normal and were made weekly before a Cabinet meeting.
“Of course we have to brief the TYT of what’s happening in Sabah and what are the latest issues to address, this is normal but no, we did not talk about the attempts to topple this government, ” he said.
Shafie said those trying to disrupt his administration should stop as enough is enough.
“We have a two-third majority in the assembly. It is not our practice to keep disturbing the stability of our state, ” he said.
He said he will talk more about this and other related issues in Parliament.
“From what we heard, those who have jumped parties are said to be regretting their decision and wish to U-turn, but of course we don’t know if this is true, ” Shafie said.
He advised these quarters to stop confusing the people and to allow the state government to do its job.
–TheStar
