KOTA KINABALU: A senior Sabah PKR leader has slammed the state government for being irresponsible in granting citizenship to illegal immigrants and allowing them to infiltrate Sabah's electoral rolls as proven in courts.
Daniel John Jambun, the PKR coordinator for Inanam, said State Umno Youth chief Azman Ruslan should reflect on why mass poverty has become a permanent problem in Sabah, before asking PKR not to politicise poverty.
"He knows this poverty is prolonged because of a bad political culture and corruption. Sabahans are poor because of corruption.
"Singapore has no natural resources but it is one of the richest countries in the world. Sabah is rich in resources… in oil, gas, timber, fertile land, and yet the poorest under Umno rule," he said in a statement here yesterday.
Bernama had reported Azman censuring PKR, urging the party not politicise poverty in Sabah. Azman said PKR should instead help alleviate the problem.
He also claimed that Umno was a responsible party and that is why many Sabahans had joined the party.
But Daniel, who is deputising for Jeffrey Kitingan in an NGO called CigMa or Common Interest Group Malaysia, alleged that Umno was far from being a responsible party, citing corruption among its leaders as an example.
"There are many examples of Umno being an irresponsible party but for the time being, I will just cite a few examples for Azman and the people to ponder.
"For instance, a former Sabah chief minister from Umno gambled away people's money in a London casino to the tune of RM50 million. Is this being responsible?
"Senior ministers having fat bank account overseas … is this being responsible? Is giving MyKads to illegal immigrants from Mindanao, Sulawesi and Java being responsible?
"The list of Umno's wrongdoings in Sabah alone is very long and surely will be distributed to the rakyat at the right time soon," he said.
Malaysia in a mess
On Azman's advice that PKR or Jeffrey should instead help solve Sabah's problems like poverty, Daniel said the latter had helped by lodging several reports with the police and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission of the alleged corruption.
“But the Umno-led government is either very slow in acting on the reports or has simply dismissed them.
"The root of our problems like mass poverty is corruption. Malaysia is in such a mess because of corruption.
"In 1967, our one dollar was equivalent to a Singapore dollar, but now a Singapore dollar is equivalent to RM2.50. Likewise, the Brunei dollar has appreciated against our ringgit.
"Singapore has no Umno. Though it has no resources besides human resources, it is one of the least-corrupted countries in the world and that is why it is so developed," he said, adding that one can only imagine how resource-rich Sabah could have fared if it had its own way.
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