PBS chief: A 'BN party' turned to 'migrants' for support

 

Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) president Maximus Ongkili has blamed some of his party's allies for the population of non-citizens in Sabah.

Speaking at the PBS annual delegates conference yesterday, Ongkili said a BN component party was involved in a citizenship-for-votes scheme where the beneficiaries were pendatang tanpa izin (PTI), a term used to describe undocumented migrants.

"I don't have to say the name of the party in BN which has sued the 'PTI service'. I think we are all aware of this issue.

"The involvement of the party to gain votes from PTI was proven in the Royal Commission of Inquiry on PTIs in Sabah.

"They abused their powers and turned to the undocumented migrants for support just because they did not want PBS to be the government in Sabah," Ongkili was quoted as saying by the Borneo Post.

The existence of such schemes was confirmed by a Royal Commission of Inquiry in 2013.

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Among others, PBS has long argued that such schemes were designed to alter Sabah's demographics for political purposes.

According to the 2020 census, there were 3,418,785 people in Sabah of which 23.7 percent were non-citizens.

Clean up voter list

In Ongkili's speech, he said that the citizenship-for-votes scheme had compromised the integrity of Sabah's voter list.

"The electoral list must be cleaned as fast as possible so that only true Sabahans are given the mandate to decide the leaders they choose.

"All these dirty tactics are part of that party’s effort to eradicate PBS’ existence, that cannot be denied. But we have not budged.

"We are still here and will remain to be here and become one of the major powers in Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS)," he added.

While attacking BN, PBS said GRS - a new coalition comprising Sabah Bersatu, PBS, Sabah Progressive Party (Sapp), Parti Solidariti Tanah Airku (Star) and United Sabah National Organisation (Usno) - was taking steps to stem the inflow of non-citizens.

"The time has come for us in GRS to be united in addressing the flooding of PTIs in Sabah. We have to be on a common front on this issue,” Ongkili said.

He also said BN has a very poor record in sorting out the PTI issue in Sabah.

"There was no concrete action from BN to address this problem and since the set up of PBS in 1985, we also have no record that we can be proud of in relation to this issue.

"The BN government failed to address the PTI problem in Sabah. It was as if they did not care about our difficulties facing the various problems linked to PTI," he added.

PBS formed the Sabah government twice in 1985 and 1990. - Mkini