KOTA KINABALU: Barisan Nasional (BN) should take advantage of the current disunity among the opposition to increase the people’s confidence in the Coalition, State Assembly Speaker Datuk Seri Salleh Said said.
Salleh was of the opinion that the rakyat are now judging the opposition which is no longer heading the same direction and in this situation, BN should be united and he is confident that the rakyat, when asked to choose between BN and Pakatan Rakyat, will opt for the former.
“The only thing now is for BN to show that its component parties can manage their differences well,” he said when met after the ‘Bicara Intelek-Isu semasa dan kesannya terhadap pengukuhan Nasional’ with staff of the state Information Department here yesterday.
“Don’t be too open in managing your differences as it could give rise to many problems. It could be used by the opposition to go against us,” he said.
Salleh who is also Umno Sabah deputy liasion chief, urged BN leaders to always be careful when giving opinions openly and if there are issues which need to be corrected, they should use the right platform to forward their opinions to party leaders.
“We as the ruling party have to play the role to explain to the rakyat about issues because at the end of the day, it is the voters who will make the decision. In the 13th general election, the voters gave BN the mandate and Datuk Seri Najib was chosen to be the Prime Minister.
“He (Najib) will continue to be Prime Minister unless the rakyat reject him in the 14th general election. It is the rakyat who make the decision and to me it is not fair that after being given the mandate, we ask that he (Najib) steps down as Prime Minister,” he said.
When asked to comment on former Prime Minister Tun Mahathir Mohammad’s comments of late, Salleh said that he is free to express his opinions but he does not have the right to force others to accept them.
“We respect his opinions but we must accept the fact that in administering the government, there is only one Prime Minister and his performance will be evaluated through the election results,” he said, adding that generally there was no major problem because it only involved differences in opinions.
According to Salleh, when Tun Mahathir asked for an explanation about 1MDB, he wanted an answer but the latter should allow the Auditor General to carry out an investigation first.
On the need for BN to change, Salleh who is also Usukan assemblyman, said that since Najib became Prime Minister, the Coalition had implemented many approaches so that it continued to be relevent.