Frantic Najib in Sabah, again?

The prime minister is expected to be in Sabah tomorrow to shore up support for the Barisan Nasional among the Christian community ahead of the Christmas celebrations.

KOTA KINABALU: Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak is scheduled to visit Sabah twice this month, in what many here consider as an increasingly desperate effort to retain his coalition government’s grip on what is looking like a battle-ground state.

Najib is expected to arrive in Sandakan tomorrow (Dec 15) to open the annual congress of Sabah Barisan Nasional minor partner, Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the following day.

On Dec 28, Najib is expected to visit rural Pensiangan where another tiny BN component, Parti Bersatu Rakyat Sabah (PBRS), is holding its own annual general meeting.

Najib, who is also Umno’s president and BN chairman, is expected to meet with the Christian community in Sandakan during his weekend visit, in an effort to shore up BN’s standing among the marginalised community ahead of the Christmas celebration on Dec 25.

He is also expected to be feted at a similar gathering when he visits Pensiangan on Dec 28 where PBRS president, Joseph Kurup, is also said to be facing an uphill task to retain the seat for BN.

In 2008, Kurup won the Pensiangan seat unopposed by default when his contender from PKR, Danny Andipai, was controversially denied the opportunity to file in his nomination papers.

Kurup and his wife Melinda barely escaped from an angry crowd at the nomination centre where he was punched.

Few are aware of the prime minister’s visit and there seems to be no publicity about it so far either by the local media or the official government organ, the Information Department, and many politicians in the ruling party said they were unaware Najib would be here.

If nothing goes wrong, the year-end visit will be his seventh trip to Sabah this year. The last one the prime minister made to the state was in October to Penampang and Ranau.

No other sitting prime minister has visited Sabah so many times in one year, not even the longest- serving premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Such was the Umno-led BN coalition’s dominance at one time that Mahathir had even brushed aside the relevance of the number of parliamentary seats in Sabah and Sarawak in his calculations to form the federal government.

All that changed when the Malay votes in the Peninsula were finally divided in half between the ruling BN and the opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition in the 2008 general election.