SANDAKAN: Sabah Chief Minister Musa Aman has rejected a challenge by SAPP president Yong Teck Lee to a debate about Sabah autonomy , saying the latter did nothing about the issue when he was chief minister.
“There is no need to engage in a debate,” he said as he began a long and bitter attack against Yong, who is a candidate in the Batu Sapi by-election.
“Yong was a chief minister at one time. During his tenure, he spent most of his time glorifying himself. Not at any one time did he speak on Sabah’s autonomy or Sabah rights.
"Yong was only good at shouting Sabah Boleh and SAPP Boleh. And he flooded the state with his self-righteous billboards. What benefit this has brought to the people, I don’t know.
"But he had his window of opportunity when he was at the helm of the government. However, he failed miserably as he was busy fighting for his own selfish gains.
“Is there any special deed that Yong has done that the BN government has not?”
Speaking to reporters after his visit to a Chinese school here, Musa said Yong was so “selfish and ungrateful” that he had, over the years, rid himself of “lieutenants who helped him to build his empire”.
He was referring to Tham Nyip Shen, Tan Kok Sui, Terence Chong, Hiew King Cheu (now Sabah DAP chief and Kota Kinabalu MP) and Jimmy Wong (now a state assemblyman and a DAP member).
“His candidacy for Batu Sapi speaks volumes for the type of leader that he is—selfish. He has some key leaders left in Sandakan, namely Tain Fook En and Poon Kee Yang. Why is he not nominating one of them?
"The answer is very obvious. He does not trust them as well. Or he has no time for other leaders as he wants a parliamentary seat for himself after he was turned down in Kota Kinabalu.”
Blue chip shares
He said Yong preferred a one-man show and liked to surround himself with yes men.
“He is also surrounded by over-the-hill politicians hoping to ride on the anti-BN bandwagon in the vain hope of making a political comeback," Musa said in reference to a host of former Berjaya and Usno members who have thrown their support behind SAPP.
"To these people I say that Yong will only make use of you as long as you can contribute to his cause. But the moment he finds out that you will outshine him, your days in SAPP are numbered.”
Musa said BN had kept its promise to build roads, improve electricity and water supplies and increase funding for Chinese schools and non-Islamic religious, but he admitted that these were not being done “as fast as some people expect”.
“Now what about Yong’s contributions when he was the chief minister? Instead of debating with us, Yong should re-examine his own track record and make them public, if at all he has any.”
Instead of calling for a debate, he said, Yong should use his campaign to explain to the people what went wrong the MISC share swap that impoverished Sabahans by “hundreds of millions” of ringgit.
"Blue chip shares were given away to his cronies in return for useless paper. Yong must explain all these.”
He said that Yong, in making the challenge, was doing nothing more than “projecting his cowboy image”.
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