Twice thwarted, Musa needs a home for a third crack at CM

SABAH POLLS | Musa Aman may have been thwarted from making a comeback twice, but the former Sabah chief minister does not appear to be letting up on his ambition.

In order to get a third crack to return as the Sabah chief minister, Musa must first win a seat in the Sabah election, but he may be facing a snag in finding a willing party to take him in.

Earlier today, Musa made a cryptic Facebook post, stating "I'm going back to Sungai Manila".

Sungai Manila is a new state seat carved out from Sungai Sibuga, a constituency which he has held since 1994.

The new seat is now more attractive for Musa as a significant portion of his supporters had moved there when it was created.

However, at least two Umno sources who spoke to Malaysiakini indicated that Musa wasn't on Umno's list of candidates, at least based on negotiations up until yesterday.

The negotiations are still fluid, but if things do not change, Musa may need to find a new party to call home if he hopes to contest under one of the established parties in Sabah.

"Based on information from Umno, Musa's is not the candidate for Sungai Manila.

"Perhaps he may be contesting under a different ticket, but we're unsure which party it is," said one of the sources within Libaran Umno.

Both Sungai Manila and Sungai Sibuga are state seats within the Libaran parliamentary constituency. The third state seat is Gum-Gum.

Musa is the sole assemblyperson to have stuck with Umno although his allegiance had been unclear since his ouster after the 14th general election.

After the 14th general election, Musa had initially mooted migrating Umno assemblypersons to PBS but did not follow through with the plan. The idea was that a Sabah-based party would be more appealing to voters.

While Musa spent most of his time overseas amid corruption charges against him, the remaining Umno assemblypersons eventually left for various parties including Bersatu, Warisan and Upko.

Musa's resurgence

In his absence, the next tier of leaders took over Sabah Umno, which is now led by Bung Moktar Radin.

But a series of developments propelled Musa back onto the post-GE14 Sabah political scene, and now he appears motivated to stay.

It started with the collapse of the Pakatan Harapan federal government and its replacement with Perikatan Nasional comprising Bersatu, BN, PAS, GPS, PBS and Star, which also led to shifts in Sabah as the federal resources "tap" started flowing again for Umno.

Then in June, Musa's corruption charges were dropped. He quickly regrouped the former Umno assemblypersons under the nose of Bung Moktar's, who had said Sabah Umno was not involved in the coup which Musa had put together.

On July 29, Musa announced he had secured enough defections to take over the Sabah government and had tried to get himself sworn in as the chief minister.

However, he was thwarted after the state's governor, Juhar Mahiruddin consented to Sabah Chief Minister Shafie Apdal's request to dissolve the state assembly, paving the way to the Sabah election on Sept 26.

It was the second blow for Musa, whose coalition won a narrow majority in the 2018 general election but was ousted through defections engineered by Shafie, who is the Warisan president.

Thwarted for the second time as chief minister and no longer in charge of Sabah Umno, Musa does not have the liberty of choosing the seat he wants to contest on a whim.

His relationship with Bung Moktar is also reportedly strained.

In August, Bung Mokhtar said he and Musa have not spoken since the 2018 elections. The status of their relationship now is uncertain.

Umno reconciliation or Bersatu lifeline?

Should Sabah BN and Umno refuse to field Musa as a candidate, he might have to turn to Bersatu or contest as an independent candidate.

Musa's links with Bersatu are well established. Bersatu secretary-general Hamzah Zainudin was reportedly involved when Musa tried to lobby the governor to be sworn in as the new chief minister in July.

Musa also published a photograph of himself with Hamzah during a political event in Kota Kinabalu on Aug 30.

When contacted, Sabah Bersatu deputy head Masiji Manjun was unable to confirm if his party had been allocated the rights to field a candidate in Sungai Manila.

Masidi, who said he had not been informed about the possibility of Musa being fielded as a Bersatu candidate, also downplayed Musa's cryptic Facebook message.

"Maybe (his Facebook post meant that) he was 'going back' to help the campaign.

"That's possible, right?" Masidi Said.

Bersatu is a splinter party of Umno and has been laying claims for several seats which Umno has contested for decades.

Despite the bitterness between the two parties, they have tried to negotiate to limit clashes with each other as it will benefit their common rival, the Warisan led alliance with Upko and Pakatan Harapan.

Umno will be contesting under the BN logo while Bersatu is planning to contest under the PN logo.

Despite the efforts, there is no guarantee that BN and PN can completely avoid clashes between themselves.

BN secretary-general Annuar Musa had yesterday lamented on Twitter that the many component parties within BN and PN are laying claim to too many seats.

"Star wants 18, Bersatu wants 45, PBS wants 30, PAS wants 10, PBRS wants 11, MCA wants six, that's 120 seats.

"Sabah only has 73 seats. If parties that only won one of two seats want to contest tens of seats, then how many should Umno ask?

"We can only negotiate as far as possible, keep calm and don't make noise," he said. - Mkini