KOTA KINABALU: Deputy Prime Minister Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail has hit back at former Dewan Rakyat speaker Pandikar Amin Mulia over his remarks that the 1MDB scandal made little difference to people in Sandakan.
Wan Azizah said while this was more of a national issue, people in Sabah have nonetheless been affected by “the biggest scandal in the world”.
“We have a debt and deficit in our budget which could have been used for Sabah, for Sandakan.
“So what do you mean by irrelevant? He was in the government, ask him.
“By saying that, does it absolve him of the problem of what happened because of 1MDB? It’s not the right thing to say — it’s a lot of money,” she said to reporters during her trip to Sandakan to show support for DAP’s Vivian Wong.
Pandikar had, during a Parti Bersatu Sabah campaign trail at Pulau Berhala, off Sandakan, yesterday said Pakatan Harapan kept on harping on the 1MDB issue at their election talks despite it being irrelevant to the daily lives of people in Sandakan.
DAP’s Lim Kit Siang had also slammed Pandikar for the remarks, which the former described as being in denial of the reality of the 1MDB scandal.
Meanwhile, on the stateless issue in Sabah, Wan Azizah said Pakatan Harapan is willing to look into results of the 2013 Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) on Illegal Immigrants in Sabah, initiated by the previous government.
She said the new government has yet to obtain the report of the RCI, led by former Sabah deputy chief minister Joseph Pairin Kitingan, from the previous administration.
“They have done an RCI, I think, before. We have to look into what were the results of that and study how to solve the problem holistically.
“It’s a long-standing problem,” she said.
Vivian’s packed schedule
Vivian denied that her inability to attend an election forum by Sabah Bersih 2.0 in Sandakan tomorrow meant that she considered the event as unimportant.
She said her campaign team was unable to slot in a last-minute invitation by Bersih to take part in the debate.
PBS candidate Linda Tsen is also unable to attend.
Vivian said she had a discussion with her campaign manager but her schedule had already been set in advance.
“Indeed my schedule is so tight. We have decided (not to attend) because our schedule has been planned ahead, so we don’t want to mess it up.
“It is not that it is not important. Because this is a last-minute thing, we couldn’t accept,” she said, adding there will be a host of political allies from the peninsula also coming to join her campaign trail.
Earlier today, Sabah Bersih 2.0 expressed its disappointment that the DAP and PBS candidates had decided to skip the forum it is organising for the Sandakan by-election candidates tomorrow.
It said only the three independent candidates, namely Hamzah Abdullah, Chia Siew Yung and Sulaiman Abdul Samat, have agreed to take part. - FMT
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