KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 2 — Sabah DAP chairman Datuk Frankie Poon Ming Fung today called Parti Warisan (Warisan) president Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal “truly shameless” for betraying former allies and attacking them in a move that is beneficial only to the Barisan Nasional (BN) and Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalitions.

In a statement this evening, Frankie compared Warisan to Parti Pejuang Tanah Air (Pejuang) and Gerakan Tanah Air (GTA) for its willingness to appeal to populist sentiment to stay relevant, and PAS for playing the “everything is DAP’s fault” card to gain political mileage.

“Shafie’s remarks are inconsistent and contradictory. He and the Warisan leaders are campaigning that they successfully regained 17 rights from the 1963 Malaysia Agreement (MA63) for Sabahans.

“Then why did he decide to make allegations against DAP for not protecting Sabahans’ rights now? The federal and state government both comprised members of Warisan and Pakatan Harapan (PH); all achievements and failures are collective, not one party’s,” the Tanjung Papat assemblyman said.

Frankie also questioned why Shafie blames DAP and its national chairman Lim Guan Eng when all discussions revolving around the rights and autonomy of Sabah were between Shafie and former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

“By Shafie’s logic, he should bear responsibility and apologise to Sabahans for failing to retrieve our entitlement on gas and oil from Dr Mahathir. He was the chief minister who engaged in negotiations with the prime minister.

“It is obvious that Shafie is the main leader behind all talks revolving around Sabah rights. But now he shifts all blame to his allies for his own political interest which just shows how low he is as a leader,” he said.

Besides that, Frankie revealed that in 2020, DAP had compromised with Shafie’s request to sacrifice the one or two seats the former was promised in order to pave way for Warisan.

“How could he now blame us that we did not hand out one of our incumbent seats to him?

“It is ridiculous that he did not only not give allies (DAP) additional seats but is still asking for more,” Frankie said.

Two weeks ago, Shafie reportedly called on voters to turn their backs on Dr Mahathir and Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim by accusing the duo of contributing to the current political stalemate.

“Malaysia can survive even if Dr Mahathir or Anwar are not around. We move on,” he was quoted as saying.