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KOTA KINABALU: A day after saying that he was ready to contest fewer seats in the next general election, Sabah Umno has expressed his enthusiasm to regain Tawau’s parliamentary seat from PBS.
Tawau Umno’s division chief, Ghazalie Ansing, said the party will place a candidate to contest the seat in the 15th general election (GE15), after handing it over to allow PBS to compete in 2013.
He said that this proposal, which was approved during the division delegates meeting here today, was to show support for the party chairman, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, and the head of Sabah BN, Bung Moktar Radin, for the next GE15.
“It is time for Tawau Umno to reclaim the seat after having previously handed it over to the BN component parts,” he said at the meeting.
“This commitment has cost the well-being of the Malay and Islamic communities. No other party can bring changes except Umno.
“This is reason enough to compete and we will demand the seat at GE15,” he said.
Former BN component party PBS contested and won the seat in GE13 through Mary Yap Kain Ching, but was defeated by Sabah PKR head Christina Liew at GE14.
Ghazalie said the party had also suffered greatly after GE14 when many leaders left Umno, except for leaders like Zahid and Bung.
“It took real leadership to revive Umno and eventually drive out Pakatan Harapan.
“I urge party members to support the agenda of looking out for the best interests of the people and move forward,” he said.
Yesterday, Bung, who is also the president of Sabah Umno, expressed his willingness to reduce the number of parliamentary seats he will contest in the upcoming general elections so that more seats are available for other parties within the ruling Gabungan Rakyat Sabah.
Bung said the move was to ensure the victory of the current government.
He said Sabah BN had allocated 14 seats for Umno to participate in the 2018 general elections, with 10 seats awarded to his former coalition partners, PBS and Upko.
“But (now) we are ready to negotiate. We want to win because it is not about how many seats will be contested, but how many seats we will win.
He calculated that Umno would contest between 10 and 12 seats.
There are 25 parliamentary seats in Sabah. In GE14, BN won 10, Warisan eight, PKR and DAP three each and STAR one.
