Did Pairin ask for Nurul’s ban?

Tongues are wagging in Sabah that PBS, which had lost six seats to Pakatan Rakyat in the May 5 polls, did not want Nurul Izzah Anwar usurping them with her presence at Kaamaatan celebrations.

KOTA KINABALU: The use of Kaamatan or Harvest Festival celebration last week as a political football is becoming more and more obvious and less and less defensible.

The ban on Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar, who is also a PKR vice-president, from entering Sabah has now been lifted, according to Sabah police commissioner Hamza Taib.

However, no reason was given for banning Nurul from entering Sabah and then lifting it.

Questions are now being raised if Huguan Siou Joseph Pairin Kitingan, the PBS president who is a Deputy Chief Minister of Sabah, had a hand in the decision by Chief Minister Musa Aman to bar the MP from entering Sabah on the first day of the climax of the Kaamatan celebrations.

The question has become pertinent after the PBS information chief Johnny Mositun came out to explain that the bar order was only for one day, to disallow  Nurul from attending the state-level Tadau Kaamatan or Harvest Festival hed on May 30-31.

Mositun, in saying that PBS fully supported the order, explained: “I believe this is not a total ban, it was for only that day because of the threat to the state’s security”.

But Mositun’s explanation has instead raised speculations that it was PBS who requested the barring for the young MP, who is the daughter of former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim who is now leading the opposition.

In the May 5 general election, PBS lost half (six) of its assemblymen to PKR and DAP and it explains how the party came to view Nurul as a threat.

The six seats PBS lost are: Matunggung, Kadamaian, Tamparuli, Inanam, Api-Api and Sri Tanjung. It nearly lost its Keningau and Kota Marudu parliamentary seats too which they won by default after a split in the opposition votes.

Penampang MP Darrel Leiking had invited Nurul to attend the Kaamatan celebration at the iconic Hongkod Koisaan where Pairin happened to be at the same time and her attendance would have detracted from his.

‘Nurul is no threat’

The electorate in Penampang voted overwhelmingly to oust the BN from power and among the ruling coalition’s major casualties in the election was Bernard Dompok, the Upko head who lost by more than 10,000 majority to Leiking.

Another Upko man, Philip Lasimbang, lost the state assembly seat of Moyog also in Penampang to unknown PKR fledgling politician, Terence Siambun.

Cementing the whitewash by the opposition in the parliamentary constituency was the defeat of the always vulnerable MCA man, Edward Khoo, who was ousted from his Kepayan state assembly seat by DAP’s Edwin Bosi.

According to wagging tongues in the community, this landslide win by the opposition must have compelled PBS to get Nurul barred for one day, as Mositun had now explained.

But veteran critic of PBS, Fredoline Edwin Lojingki, 73, has chided Mositun for his explanation of the issue.

The respected Kadazan Dusun Cultural Association life member said Mositun believes Sabahans are so naive as to believe Nurul is a threat to Sabahans way of life.

“Why must Mositun bar a democratically-elected MP from joining us in the celebration of out Kaamatan?” asked Lojingki in a statement to FMT.

Lojingki said even BN MP Bung Mokhtar Radin had issued a statement that the barring of Nurul was a mistake and must not have been carried out in the first place as she was no threat to the state’s security.

Astro Awani reported Monday evening that police commissioner Hamza had disclosed that apart from Nurul, no other politician had been banned from entering the state.

“As far as the police are concerned, we know that there are no other individuals banned except for Nurul. But her ban had been listed,” the TV station quoted him as saying.

He also said that there was no problem for any other leader to enter the state, so long as they abide by the law