CLOSE to 10,000 people filled Kapayan Boulevard in Kota Kinabalu yesterday night to hear Parti Warisan Sabah president Shafie Apdal urge Sabahans  to stop allowing Barisan Nasional to use them as a “safe deposit” of votes.

“We should no longer be the safe deposit of anyone. It is already time for us to think and to determine our own fate, and to reclaim the rights owed us since 1963,” said Shafie to loud cheers.

The federal government’s failure to honour Sabah’s special rights had caused thousands of Sabahans to be poor even though the state was rich in natural resources such as oil and gas and timber, said Shafie.

Activist Zainal Ajamain said Sabahans were increasingly knowledgeable about the Malaysia Agreement 1963 and the state’s special rights, and this could cause BN’s downfall in Sabah.

More than a million people here will head to the polls on Wednesday.

“If there was a Chinese tsunami in 2013,  the tsunami this time will involve all the races,” he said.

But Sabahans are also worried about the opposition leadership. Pakatan Harapan is headed by former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, whom they associated with “Project IC”, a programme to grant Muslim foreigners citizenship to balance out the political power wielded by Christian Kadazans in West Malaysia, back in the 1990s.

Many believed Dr Mahathir could well prove to be the opposition’s downfall in Sabah.

Shafie said Dr Mahathir would visit Sabah, but not now.

“We want Dr Mahathir to come. But we want him to concentrate on where he has strength. We have discussed (his visit to Sabah) at length.

“But for now the plan is we (Warisan) topple BN here while he topples them in Kuala Lumpur, which has more parliamentary seats than Sabah,” he said.

Senior journalist, Colin Forsythe, said change was certain in Sabah, saying that he had never seen such a huge turnout for a political party.

“I have not seen this many people (at a ceramah) since the rise (1985) and fall (1994) of Parti Bersatu Sabah,” he said. – May 6, 2018.