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KOTA KINABALU: Sabah-based Warisan unanimously decided to spread its wings to the peninsula, party leader Shafie Apdal said today.
The party will start with Johor and Selangor, where there are high concentrations of Sabahans, to start their divisions and branches, he added.
The party would seek to serve the people of the peninsula, particularly the roughly 300,000 Sabahans who work and live in West Malaysia. “But we will not go to all the areas there, only where there are many Sabahans,” he said.
Warisan was founded by Shafie in October 2016, a few months after he left Umno, resigning as vice president in a dispute over Najib Razak’s leadership as party leader and prime minister over the 1Malaysia Development Bhd controversy.
Shafie said that Warisan’s constitution does not prevent the party from having a national presence and that there would be no need to change the party’s name or symbol.
“If the parties on the peninsula can set foot here, why can’t Warisan do it on the peninsula?” He said today at the party’s annual convention. “There is nothing unusual about it.” He said that PBS had previously established itself in Penang and Upko in Perak.
When asked if opposition partners had opposed Warisan’s expansion, Shafie said the opposite happened. “In fact, they wonder, long before, why Warisan has not expanded to the peninsula,” he said.
Warisan General Secretary Loretto Padua Jr had said today that the party unity theme it would become fashionable in western Malaysia. “We trust what we have been saying and holding on to all this time, which is unity, that Sabah will show them the way,” he said.
