Warisan wins if Sabah Umno parts ways with PPBM, says analyst

Warisan Plus has more seats in Sabah than Umno and PPBM have as individual parties.

KOTA KINABALU: A political analyst sees Warisan emerging as the winner if Umno and PPBM decide to part ways in Sabah.

Speaking to FMT, Awang Azman Pawi of Universiti Malaya said neither Umno nor PPBM could form a state government alone and each would try to find a new political partner to do so.

That partner would most likely be Warisan, he added.

Umno and PPBM each has fewer seats than Warisan in the state assembly, and Warisan would be the dominant party in a partnership with either and take the chief minister’s post, Awang Azman said.

However, he also said Sabah Umno could choose to continue working with PPBM to keep the Gabungan Rakyat Sabah government intact even if Umno headquarters were to withdraw its support for Perikatan Nasional at the federal level.

It could do this because party headquarters had granted it the freedom to chart its own cause, he said.

“But the catch is that it might want the chief minister’s seat”

“In any case, PPBM has everything to lose if PN breaks up. It will lose the chief minister’s post if it decides to work with either Umno or Warisan,” he said.

Warisan won 23 seats in the Sabah election last year and its allies in Warisan Plus won nine.

GRS won a total of 38 seats. Seventeen of those seats belong to PN, 14 to BN and seven to PBS. Three independents who won later pledged allegiance to PN.

The Umno Supreme Council has deferred any decision on the party’s support for PPBM to the end of this month, when the party will have its annual general assembly.

Another analyst, Lee Kuok Tiung of Universiti Malaysia Sabah, said GRS leaders would have to sort out their priorities if they wished to keep the coalition intact.

He said he believed they could do so although it would be tough because “within GRS, you have PN, BN and Muafakat Nasional besides the PN Plus parties”.

He said the various groups would eventually come to an agreement, like they did over the contentious issue of whom to appoint as chief minister when they took over the government.

Lee described GRS as “an outfit that works” and said it would be insensible to break it up.

He said it should consider joining forces with Gabungan Parti Sarawak “to form a Borneo bloc”. - FMT

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