Fact: Parti Warisan Sabah has attracted solid crowds to its gatherings over the past three months with its promise of a richer, safer and new Sabah.

Fact: there is a restive mood among Sabahans with a growing appetite for politicians who promise more independence from Putrajaya.

Fact: there are niggling problems between Sabah Umno and its key Barisan Nasional partner, Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS).

Still, political analysts say Shafie Apdal and his five-month‎-old party will fail in the attempt to unseat BN in the Borneo state.

“The big turnout reflects the prevailing political sentiment in Sabah,” said an insider from PBS, which is the second-largest party in the state’s BN coalition.

However, he said, the large crowds at opposition rallies and gatherings would not translate to gains at the ballot.

“The reality is that these same people, when it comes to casting their ballot, will in most instances, vote for the ruling party,” he said.

Why is he so certain?

Because when the time comes, the well-endowed BN machinery will employ a combination of spreading goodies and intimidation, he said.

“In Sabah, ever since former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad meddled in affairs of the state, the party that can scheme things, is good at manipulating and intimidating voters and has endless cash is the one that would win the elections.

“It has been that way since the 1970s and was an art form in the 1980s, until today.

“So look around you and see which (other) party has all those criteria. Certainly not Warisan.”

He said illegal immigrants holding identity cards, or Mykad, will continue to play a crucial role in ensuring BN retains power in the next elections.

“Let’s put it this way, the moment these ‘legal’ illegals lean towards the opposition, they could get a visit from the relevant authorities.”

While his opponents admit that Shafie’s Warisan has garnered a sizeable number of supporters, political observers said his party could not defeat BN on its own.

“Nothing to worry about,” PBS assemblyman for Kiulu Joniston Bangkuai said.

“They might have made some inroads into the largely-Umno held Muslim Bumiputera-majority areas on the state’s east coast, but they are still not strong enough to dislodge Umno,” he said.

James Chin, head of the University of Tasmania’’s Asia Institute, said for Warisan to take over the Umno-led BN state government, it needed to win “80% of the Chinese-majority seats, 50%-60% of Kadazandusun seats and 30%-40% of the Muslim Bumiputera seats”.

This was a tall order for any political party wanting to go it alone.

Chin said Warisan would unlikely be able to achieve its political dreams of unseating BN if it continued to refuse to work with other local opposition parties.

The votes of the “Sabah nationalists” were particularly crucial to Warisan’s grand political scheme, Chin said in a telephone interview.

He said the Sabah nationalists – urban, intellectual Kadazandusun and Chinese – traditionally supported the opposition Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP), which Warisan must now win over to have any chance of toppling the BN.

“That will be the biggest problem: competing with SAPP for the nationalists’ votes,” said Chin.

SAPP president Yong Teck Lee said Warisan’s plan to go alone in the next elections was “arrogant”.‎

Yong, who was chief minister from 1996 to 1998, told The Malaysian Insight recently in Kota Kinabalu, that Warisan would be able to “draw away some Umno votes like Parti Pribumi in Malaya”, but it would not be able to topple BN in the state. – April 2, 2017.