From left: Poon, Wong and Chong cutting a cake at the thanksgiving dinner held at a seafood restaurant in Sandakan on Saturday night.
SANDAKAN: Democratic Action Party (DAP) Sandakan held a thanksgiving dinner to celebrate the victory of its three candidates here namely Sandakan Member of Parliament Stephen Wong Tien Fatt, Tanjong Papat Assemblyman Frankie Poon Ming Fung and Elopura Assemblyman Calvin Chong Ket Kiun.
More than 400 DAP supporters attended the dinner held at a seafood restaurant here on Saturday night.
Wong, who is also DAP Sabah Chairman, was moved to tears when speaking to the attendees as he shared how he was touched by kind gestures of many individuals who had showed support to DAP during the campaigning period.
“There were people who sent food and drinks to us. I am truly touched by the people’s action in supporting us (DAP). When we had nothing to give you (supporters), you donated money to us for campaigning.
“The campaigning period truly felt like a war, and we have finally won the war. We are now the government. I want to thank all for your continuous support,” he said.
Wong also shared that when he was Sandakan MP for five years as an opposition leader, on some days he had hard time sleeping at night thinking about how helpless he was in helping the people of Sandakan.
“Sometimes I couldn’t sleep thinking about how I want to help Sandakan, but couldn’t. Sometimes our cries at the Parliament sitting are ignored, and a lot of times even when I know the problem and how to solve it, there was nothing I could do as the opposition lacked allocation.
“Now that we are the government, I will try my best. Please support us as we ‘re-build’ Sandakan,” he said.
Meanwhile, Chong said that he will keep all his promises to the people of Elopura and he will play a different role than the previous assemblyman.
“Before this, with the previous assemblyman, the people of Elopura thought that the work of an assemblyman is to fix all the infrastructure and facility problems here. However, that is not the job of an assemblyman.
“Part of my job will be to ensure that the infrastructure and facilities are maintained and fixed by the authority, I will set up a team to inspect as well. However, I should not be concentrating to personally fix all these problems; instead, I am going to focus on bringing development to Elopura.
“For the past few years we have not seen any changes to Elopura. The previous assemblymen may have been busy answering to all the maintenance problems here. I am going to work differently so that Elopura will have new job opportunities and a more systematic road system,” Chong said.