Jeffrey, Yong fail to settle seats issue

Both disagreed with each other's presumed strength in
many Kadazandusun areas, where both want to break into.

By Luke Rintod of FMT

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah-based opposition party leaders Yong Teck Lee and Jeffrey Kitingan were in discussions last night in a last- ditch effort to stitch together a pact to give Sabah voters a clear choice between a local opposition front and a peninsula-based one.

But the two pivotal figures in Sabah’s opposition power play, however, again failed to reconcile their overlapping claims for Sabah parliamentary and state seats.

According to sources, the secrecy surrounding the meeting caused some delay in the arrival of representatives – from both parties – at the rendezvous point in the city.

When it was finally held, both Yong and Jeffrey, however, disagreed with each other’s presumed strength in many Kadazandusun areas, where both want to break into.

According to the sources, apart from the two, others at the meeting were SAPP deputy president Amde Sidek, STAR state secretary Guande Kohoi as well as former Upko leader now with STAR, James Ligunjang.

Yong claims his Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) has more clout than Jeffrey’s State Reform Party (STAR) in some of the state seats he is pursuing.

Insiders, who claimed some knowledge of the meeting, said STAR and SAPP appeared to clash in five (of the total 25) parliamentary seats and as many as 13 of the 60 state assembly seats, all Kadazandusun areas.

The failure to narrow their differences last night echoed the results of previous meetings.

Both temporarily abandoned the talks towards the end of last year at a time when Yong was keenly pursuing a pact with peninsula-based PKR, the de facto leader of the main opposition front, Pakatan Rakyat, that also groups PAS, DAP and a smattering of “friendly” local groupings.

Pakatan has rejected SAPP’s demands to contest in more than half of the 60 state seats in Sabah on the basis that SAPP was too ambitious.

Counter proposal

STAR, on the other hand, stayed out of the negotiations with Pakatan and remained adamant that peninsula-based parties should not contest in Sabah.

Observers noted that had SAPP-Pakatan negotiation been fruitful, Yong would have gone on with it, minus STAR.

As such, the younger leaders within STAR continue to view Yong with suspicion..

But there are others within STAR who see Yong as bolder and more decisive compared to Jeffrey, who is perceived as “indecisive”.

Sources from both parties also said that Yong had brought a new bargaining chip to the table.

This involved SAPP taking the majority of the state seats and letting STAR concentrate in almost all of the 25 parliamentary seats “since Jeffrey is very interested to be a king-maker”, said one insider.

While Jeffrey is expected to explore the offer, it may be too late for STAR to get into such arrangement as many of its own potential candidates would be in a quandary having resigned from government posts in anticipation of contesting under STAR for state seats.

Many in STAR are also weary with Jeffrey’s personal stand on the offer, especially after he recently declared that STAR was not interested in the chief ministership but in the Borneo Agenda.

SAPP, on its part, has yet to shake off its Chinese party image and be recognised as an “open community” party.

‘Jeffrey must be decisive’

Meanwhile, a STAR leader, when contacted by FMT, said: “Jeffrey cannot play open all the time… he must be decisive or we will be trapped in our own miscalculations. This is a cut-throat politics and we are dealing with exceptionally ambitious people.”

“Jeffrey has neither rejected Yong’s gambit nor has he brought it up at a STAR meeting so far,” he said.

The STAR’s top leadership is meeting in Keningau tonight where Jeffrey is expected to brief his lieutenants of what transpired at last night’s meeting.

Both SAPP and STAR are driven by the same political strategy: both want “local government” for Sabah. Last night’s meeting was seen as a final roll of the dice to out-manoeuvre both the BN as well as Anwar Ibrahim’s Pakatan.

Both Yong and Jeffrey insist that only state-based political parties should replace the Umno-led BN government.

But SAPP has adopted a softer tone and contends that peninsula-based parties should only have a minority role in the state government and as such, should not contest for more than a handful of state assembly seats, with the trade-off being parliamentary seats in Sabah.

STAR, however, maintains that all peninsula-based parties should leave both parliamentary and state seats to Sabah parties altogether.

The rationale being that there are 165 parliamentary seats and around 400 state seats up for grabs in the 11 states in the peninsula and Pakatan should focus on this.