KOTA KINABALU – Warisan has urged the Gabungan Rakyat Sabah government to call for an emergency assembly next week to have a strong Sabah representation before Parliament convenes.
Warisan deputy president Datuk Darell Leiking said the emergency state sitting must be conducted to enable the 24 MPs to present a united front when bringing up the aspirations and needs of Sabahans in Parliament.
“Sabah must produce a strong Sabahan front. The state assembly must have a set of common agendas and such resolutions will form a bipartisan position when Parliament convenes.
“It will be a strategic move for all Sabah’s elected representatives, more so now that we are in the Covid-19 era, to forge a common position for Sabah to ratify at Parliament what the state assembly has unanimously passed.
“There is not a more opportune time than now,” he said in a statement today.
Leiking said this is the time for all Sabah MPs to temporarily forgo their political clashes and adopt a common cause for the sake of the people.
“It seems to me that the federal government’s decisions or even Sabah’s own self-limitations have hindered us in so many ways, especially when the federal government has not satisfactorily allotted special MCO/EMCO fund packages for Sabah.
“We can obviously see the debacle over the waiting game to seek a gazette of the new SOPs (standard operating procedures) that Sabah requested, to which, in my opinion, should have only been a notice given, but decisions were enforced immediately at Sabah without federal consent at all. After all, Sabah has its own set of public health ordinance and licensing laws.”
“Warisan is prepared to debate, and where necessary, contribute to the common agendas as long as it is meant for the immediate relief and assistance to ordinary Sabahans, Sabah’s SMEs and micro-industries, and most of all, the securement of Sabah’s rights and fiscal entitlement to manage its post-pandemic economic revival.”
Leiking said this is also the time for the Sabah government to seek a unanimous decision at the state assembly on matters including the rejection of the Territorial Sea Act 2012 and to reinstate the Health Ministry in Sabah.
“Most importantly, Sabah will never again be at the mercy of any federal government.” – The Vibes, July 3, 2021
