KOTA KINABALU: State Reform Party (STAR) has been the victim of Angkatan Perubahan Sabah (APS) attacks all this while, said its deputy chairman, Daniel John Jambun.
“It is laughable to hear the APS chairman (Datuk Seri Panglima Wilfred Bumburing) telling us to focus on toppling BN when it was his NGO who started attacking STAR in the first place,” Jambun said.
“We tried to be patient, but as the harassment became more heated from APS we had to respond eventually.”
Jambun cited the case of APS leaders spreading false stories about STAR chairman Datuk Dr Jeffrey Kitingan supposedly seeing Tun Daim Zainuddin in Nexus Karambunai, and now about Jeffrey having already received RM50 million from Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar al-Bukhary as a secret funding from Umno.
According to them, Jeffrey had also said “clearly in public” that with seats in hands STAR YBs could go to any party with the best bid, when in fact it was a deliberate misinterpretation of Jeffrey’s proposal for a kingmaker’s strategy, he said.
“These outright lies had the purpose of insinuating that STAR is in cahoots with the BN supposedly to break up the opposition votes, and this is the very lie that APS is still telling the people, believing this will kill STAR,” Jambun claimed.
“We in STAR know that APS is so desperate to get support that it had to launch a strategy to find all sorts of ways to get the upper hand, and abandoning the original objective of criticizing the BN altogether.
“It is also very ironic that Bumburing again sent a list of attacks against us in the same breath he was asking us to focus on toppling BN. He was not showing a good example of his own advice, so are we to stop responding to his attacks and focus only on revealing BN’s weaknesses and failings?
“It is also hard to believe that APS is not subservient to any political party in Pakatan Rakyat when Anwar Ibrahim gives his stamp of approval to APS in its gatherings and has given the green light for APS candidates to contest under PKR tickets.
“If APS is not subservient to PKR, why can’t it disregard the PR seat allocation negotiation and just go ahead and contest all the KDM seats? The problem with that decision is that APS candidates wouldn’t be able to use PKR tickets. If it wants PKR tickets then it has to listen to, i.e. be subservient to PKR — plain and simple!” he said in a statement yesterday.
As for Bumburing’s claim that the Sarawak declaration was his version of the Borneo Agenda, Jambun pointed put that the points of the declarations should have been mere shadows of what had already been promised by British leaders and Tunku Abdul Rahman who uttered them to entice the people of Sabah to agree to be part of Malaysia.
I quote: “Today is a historic day for Sabah. It marks the beginning of self-government and independence and the end of colonialism” (Sir William Goode, outgoing Governor of North Borneo, Sabah Times, Jesselton, August 1, 1963); “The granting of Self-Government too would enable Sabah to stand on its own feet as equal with Malaya, Sarawak and Singapore” (Tunku Abdul Rahman Sabah Times, Jesselton, August 30th, 1963); “The important aspect of the Malaysia deal, as I see it, is that it will enable the Borneo territories to transform their present colonial status to ‘Self-Government’ for themselves and absolute independence in Malaysia simultaneously”; “The days of imperialism are gone and it is not the intention of Malaya to perpetuate or revive them. When the Bornean territories become part of Malaysia, they will cease to be a colony of Malaya, they will be partners of equal status, no more or less” (Tunku Abdul Rahman, The Strait Times, October 2nd, 1962).
Jambun said these were the original assurances and guarantees promised to Sabah, and it is the mission of STAR, the core objective of STAR’s Borneo Agenda to get them to be implemented as part of the Malaysian realities in Borneo.
“Why? Because these are Sabah inherent rights which cannot be achieved under a Malayan party.
“It is regrettable that Bumburing and his followers are now resorting to cheap, below-the-belt insults just to score points in the exchanges with STAR, but we are not perturbed and will continue to be gentlemen and professional in our political approach,” he said.
“As of Jeffrey’s political records even Bumburing knows that Jeffrey’s critics have twisted facts to make it look as if Jeffrey is the villain when he was actually the victim in the various parties he joined.
“Look at how PKR treated him. As for the AKAR case, Jeffrey didn’t try to get the presidency of the party because the late Mark Koding appointed him to be acting president while he was studyng in Australia,” he pointed out.
Jambun added at one time Jeffrey believed in struggling for a national agenda through Umno, so he applied to join the party, but fortunately providence had prevented the move and led him eventually to fight for the right political vision and mission for the Malaysians in Borneo.
“The issue is not what happened in the past but what are the real struggles of Jeffrey, Bumburing or other leaders, at the present time. No one should be made guilty for being a member of a different political party in the past knowing that we are in a political climate in which so many are political frogs. We can’t change the past but we can determine the future through our actions in the present.
“By resorting to personal attacks, Bumburing and his followers are showing that they have run out of legitimate issues to present to the people.
“We understand that it must be very frustrating to go into areas and find out that there is very little response or support from the people because STAR had preceded you, so the only other choice is to attack to kill STAR in their ceramahs as well as their press releases,” Jambun said.
“But if APS is sincere in its suggestion that we both should be focusing on toppling BN, then the mutual attacks should stop — from both sides.”