KOTA KINABALU: Sabah PKR Woman’s Head Rahimah Majid pointed out that appointment to the PKR state liasion committee should have been made through and by consultation with all the 26 divisional heads in Sabah.
But Rahimah claimed that State PKR chairperson Christina Liew had announced a full list of her own preference with none from the group of 13 divisional heads appointed to the main committee.
“In the January 18, 2017 meeting, many divisional heads did object to her pushing ahead with her own line-up, and the meeting contended that such important appointments should be first discussed among all the 26 divisional heads so as to arrive to an inclusive line-up. That was the aspiration of the party, both its national and state leaderships, shared by the majority of party members in Sabah.
“In actuality, at the meeting on January 18, the chairperson in fact agreed to discuss further these appointments with the rest of the 26 divisional heads. After many objected to her proposal and after she agreed it should be discussed further, it was very clear there could be no way the same meeting decided to allow her to go ahead to unilaterally announce her own preferred state line-up. That would be dictatorial and goes straight against her own and the party’s principles,” she added in a statement yesterday.
In regards to Datuk Kong Hong Ming, Rahimah recalled that Kong was telling the meeting he could not accept his appointment as head of Legal Bureau then because it was made without discussion among the divisional heads and he pushed for these proposed appointments, made unilaterally by Christina, should be discussed further to make it inclusive.
As for Roland Chia, she said he did attend the meeting but he had to leave half way to attend to another matter, before the discussion on appointments, which was intentionally pushed to the end of the meeting.
“To many, January 18 was the first time they heard of any purported appointment to posts because there was no prior consultation. But everyone knows Roland’s clear stand and principles on good governance and good leadership,” said Rahimah.
She also said it was totally a misleading statement by PKR state secretary Abdul Razak Jamil that the state committee deferred announcement of the state line-up to February 1, two weeks after the January 18 meeting, to give time for the divisional heads to think about their appointments.
The January 18 meeting resolved that appointments must be discussed further among the 26 heads, and any decision should have been guided by this resolution, and not by personal dictatorial preference by the new chairperson, which in the first place had become the source of doubt and disagreements, said Rahimah.
“Sabah PKR must stay united and inclusive. We will not allow a ‘one person rule’, we believe in inclusiveness, after all the party belongs to all of us,” she added.