PBS confident of support from BN colleagues

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PENAMPANG: Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) executive deputy president Datuk Seri Dr Maximus Ongkili is confident that the motion with Sarawak parties to restore lost provisions in Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) will be supported by their Barisan Nasional (BN) colleagues.

“I will be surprised if they don’t support. It’s just that we want to play the leading role (as) some are a little bit hesitant; they are watching,” he said when asked if he was confident of getting the support from other BN component parties like Umno for instance, to the motion.

Speaking to reporters after officiating at the PBS Women and Youth annual delegates convention here yesterday, Maximus said: “I believe Umno is willing to support (the motion).

“But at the moment because there is a ‘coolness’ in the whole issue, (some parties are) just watching. I think that we as a responsible number two party in Sabah, we want to inform the public that what Sarawak is doing is good.

“And PBS has been doing this the last 31 years and voicing it out,” he said, adding that Sabah and Sarawak could not do it individually; they must do it together so that there will be weightage to bring to the discussion table of the federal government with these two states.

“So I am confident the other parties will support us. Only some might have the mood of caution so we do not want to wait for that, we declare we want to table next week, we have four members of parliament, we will vote for you. That is what we say,” he stressed.

To a question  whether Dewan Rakyat Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin would accept the motion seeing that he had rejected the same motion tabled by the opposition in the past, Maximus replied that it was too premature to comment on the matter.

“First, the motion be formulated, then submitted – this is of common interest for everybody. I am optimistic that the federal government is open to the whole idea. Yes Tan Sri Pandikar had rejected the opposition’s motion but I am an incurable optimist. I think the bigger the group the stronger (we are).

“Let’s hope that even the Peninsular Malaysians will join forces with us,” he said.

Recently Maximus was reported as saying that PBS was formalising a working relation with Sarawak parties to table a motion in parliament to return the definition of Federation as per pre-1976 Constitution amendment.

Several PBS divisions plan to move a motion at the party congress to work with their BN counterparts in Sarawak to return definition as per pre-1976 Constitution amendment, he said.

The Federal Constitution was amended in 1976, where Sabah and Sarawak were ‘demoted’ from a ‘sibling’ relationship to a ‘father-child’ relationship alongside other states in Malaysia.

This constitutional amendment in 1976 was done with approval by the then BN government of Sabah and Sarawak.

According to Maximus, Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Adenan Satem had made it public to table a motion on the matter and PBS had declared its decision to second the move.

“We are in sync with Tan Sri (Adenan) when he said  Sarawak is a partner in Malaysia. Sabah, too, is not just another state in Malaysia,” he said.