Madius Tangau
KOTA KINABALU: UPKO acting president Datuk Seri Panglima Wilfred Madius Tangau has advised his two ‘best friends’, who are now in the opposition, to stop with the politics and move on.
Tangau was referring to his two former Barisan Nasional comrades, PBS acting president Datuk Seri Panglima Maximus Ongkili and Umno Sabah liason chairman Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor.
“The election is over. It is time for us to move forward and let us elevate this state. The opposition would also still play a part, as check and balance. Stop with the politics. You cannot talk about politics everyday,” Tangau told reporters when met at the State Legislative Assembly sitting today.
“I would like to take this opportunity to respond to a statement made by my friend Dr Maximus Ongkili yesterday, a statement which was quite mean. He alleged that PBS is now in the opposition because of UPKO.
“I would like to stress that, in the recent election, Barisan Nasional actually lost. They won 29 seats out of 60 seats. PBS had also lost, they contested in 13 seats and only won six. Most importantly, they lost in Tambunan and Bingkor,” Tangau said.
He said that if PBS had won in Bingkor and Tambunan, BN would have still emerged victorious.
He stressed that it is the people (the voters) who made PBS the opposition and therefore it was not Upko’s fault.
“For UPKO, we follow the aspirations of the people. This is because, based on the popular vote in the recent election, 60 per cent of the people had voted for the opposition. That is why we chose to side with people,” he said.
Tangau said that he failed to understand why his best friend Ongkili is so fixated about criticizing UPKO.
He had also commented on Hajiji’s outburst during the sitting yesterday.
The two were involved in a heated exchange of words after Tangau said that UPKO had left BN to work together with the Warisan-Pakatan Harapan ruling coalition, in hopes of kicking Umno out of Sabah.
The furious Hajiji then said that Tangau had no right to speak for Umno and that the latter owed his Tuaran parliamentary victory to the Umno voters.
“Yes, it is true that I ran away from Umno. I ran away from the control of Umno,” he said.
Tangau opined that Umno has no place in Sabah, similar to its neighbouring state Sarawak.
“We want to follow the Sabah culture. There is no need for the Malaya culture. We are more comfortable now. No one can ‘bully’ us anymore…luckily we escaped from Umno’s grip,” he said.