Parti Gagasan Rakyat Sabah information chief Datuk Nizam Abu Bakar Titingan.
KOTA KINABALU: A Parti Gagasan Rakyat Sabah (Gagasan Rakyat) leader has not discounted the possibility of more Opposition assemblymen crossing the floor to join the party.
Gagasan Rakyat information chief Datuk Nizam Abu Bakar Titingan said that Opposition lawmakers - particularly from Warisan - are disillusioned with the state of affairs in the party led by former chief minister Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal.
“We always hear them (Warisan defectors) saying ‘enough is enough’ of the politicking going on in the party,” he said at an engagement session with the media at a hotel here on Tuesday (Feb 28).
Nizam added that these defectors say that the Warisan leadership have forgotten their focus to help develop the state and the people.
“And so I am confident that if this reason is true, more members, assemblymen from Warisan will probably join us,” he added.
This comes after Petagas assemblyman Datuk Awang Ahmad Sah Sahari announced his departure from Parti Warisan on Monday (Feb 27), the 10th elected state representative to quit the party since the 2020 Sabah snap elections.
Awang Ahmad, who was the Warisan treasurer-general and Putatan division chief, had said on Monday that he and his supporters were leaving the party to join Gagasan Rakyat which is led by Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor.
He is the fourth assemblymen to leave Warisan this year after Norazlinah Arif (Kunak), Mohammad Mohamarin (Banggi) and Chong Chen Bin (Tanjong Kapor) who jointly announced their support for Hajiji on Feb 6.
Norazlinah had claimed that she left Warisan willingly because she no longer agreed with the party's inconsistent direction.
She added that Warisan's failed attempt to topple the Hajiji's Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) government early in January had created a power struggle within the party.
The other assemblymen who had quit Warisan and joined Gagasan Rakyat were Hassan Gani Amir (Sebatik) and Datuk Dr Yusof Yacob (Sindumin).
Two other assemblymen, Datuk Peter Anthony (Melalap) and Datuk Juil Nuatim (Limbahau), formed a new party called Parti KDM, while Kukusan assemblyman Rina Jainal joined Parti Harapan Rakyat Sabah.
Datuk Mohamaddin Ketapi, an assemblyman from Segama, stayed with Parti Bangsa Malaysia even though he briefly supported Sabah Umno in January this year.
Meanwhile, Nizam said they were expecting 5,000 people from all over Sabah to attend Gagasan Rakyat’s official launching at the Sabah International Convention Centre here this Thursday (March 2).
“We currently have almost 100,000 members, a majority of them who quit the Sabah chapter of Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) before and joined Gagasan Rakyat.
“We are expecting more to apply from other parties or those without parties but who are interested to support Gagasan Rakyat.
“We hope Sabahans will continue to unite under GRS, particularly through Gagasan Rakyat, to ensure Sabah and its people continue to progress,” he said.
