DARK clouds were hovering above Kampung Nambazan in Penampang, threatening the last of Parti Warisan Sabah’s jelajah (roadshow) with rain and more mud.

The field where the gathering was held in this village in the Kadazandusun heartland, some 11km from Kota Kinabalu, was already a little muddy from the previous day’s rain.

Still, the threat of rain failed to stop the steady stream of people coming to hear what Shafie Apdal and other Warisan leaders have to say in the party’s final roadshow on March 25.

“This may be the last of the jelajah but it is not the end of the road,” Shafie told an estimated crowd of 10,000.

He said beginning April, Warisan grassroots leaders would make house calls and hold town-hall meetings in every kampung and town.

And it would start in the home turf of Deputy Chief Minister and former chief of the Kadazandusun, Joseph Pairin Kitingan’s stronghold of Tambunan.

Shafie is blazing a new political trail after resigning from Umno where he was one of its vice-presidents following his removal as the minister of rural and regional development.

With Umno, this polished orator had won the Semporna parliamentary seat five terms.

He first won this largely Bumiputera-Muslim constituency in the 1995 general election and in all five elections, has never garnered lower than 76% of the votes.

Despite his new political position, the 60-year-old of Bajau-Suluk ethnicity is predicted to retain his seat in the 14^th general election (GE14).

But for Shafie, his goal goes beyond retaining the seat for the sixth time.

The turnout at the jelajah has been large and the response at each roadshow encouraging enough for the party to predict being able to topple the Umno-BN state government in the next state election.

Shafie told the crowd in Penampang how he would restructure the Sabah Foundation, a state-linked statutory body better known by its Malay name Yayasan Sabah, whose objective was to promote educational and economic opportunities for the people.

He pledged to open an investigation “the moment we form the government to find out where have all the Yayasan’s properties and money gone to”.

“We want to know what happened to the one million hectares (of landbank earmarked for oil palm plantation),” Shafie said, as the crowd responded with shouts of “semua habis” (all gone).

Gauging from the jelajah, Shafie is convinced that the Umno-BN state government can be toppled at the next elections, citing past political “giants”, such as the United Sabah National Organisation (Usno), Parti Bersatu Rakyat Jelata Sabah or more commonly known by its abbreviation Berjaya, and Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS).

His roadshows have been largely held at major towns – among them the east coast towns of Semporna and Lahad Datu, the resort island of Banggi off Kudat, in Kudat itself, the coffee-growing hill town of Tenom, Kota Marudu and the rural Pensiangan.

But what was significant in the Penampang gathering was the presence of representatives from opposition parties.

Sabah PKR chief Christina Liew was there and so were representatives from DAP and Parti Cinta Sabah (PCS) and Pairin’s family members.

His brother, a sister and her husband were among the crowd and Shafie announced they would be joining Warisan.

“They are welcome to our gathering as they are Sabahans and we all have a common objective and that is to topple the BN government.” – April 2, 2017.