PKR wants Warisan to stay out of Labuan
Published on: Sunday, June 11, 2017
Labuan: Recently-formed Parti Warisan Sabah should focus on strengthening its presence in Sabah instead of contesting the Labuan parliamentary seat in the coming general election."Otherwise, this could be viewed as being over ambitious," said Labuan PKR Chairman Simsudin Sidek."We welcome other opposition parties as we stand on the same platform. This was on condition that the newcomer will join forces with us to topple Barisan Nasional (BN) in Labuan. Fielding a candidate would split the votes for the opposition and this would benefit BN and not any of us," he said.ADVERTISEMENT He was referring to an announcement by Warisan Vice President Junz Wong that Warisan would contest in Labuan.He said BN's popularity on the island was now at its lowest point and the coming general election is a splendid opportunity to enroot BN's hold on Labuan. "This could only be done with the co-operation of all, including Warisan."Simsudin also pointed out that there were ample state and parliamentary seats in Sabah and Warisan should also use its resources to capture them and defend their existing state and MP seats which were won under BN and could be shaky.ADVERTISEMENT He said PKR had been around since 1999 and in the last general election its candidate, Tan Sri Ibrahim Menudin made an impact by collecting 6,669 votes. "It was the biggest number of voters garnered by an opposition party."
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Simsudin said though PKR lost the election it had reduced BN's majority by about 2,000 votes. In the 2008 election, BN won with a majority of 8,457 votes while in the last election, it was 6,625."The figures speak for themselves and so Warisan should come to Labuan and co-operate with us for the good of both parties and not field a candidate as this could be a spoiler," added Simsudin.He further said PKR had been working on the ground for about 10 years and there were already signs that the party was well accepted now than before. Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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He added that PKR had brought up many issues and the latest was the drive to collect 30,000 signatures from here and in Sabah to petition Putrajaya for the proposed Labuan-Menumbok bridge.The drive, he said, commenced last month and about 20,000 signatures had already been collected and "an advance copy of the petition had been recently handed to PKR President Datuk Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail. - Sohan Das