NATIONAL opposition parties should leave it to the Sabah-based parties to help them in their quest to capture Putrajaya, Sabah opposition leader Lajim Ukin said.

He said DAP, PAS and PKR should not increase their seats in the state and instead allow local parties to contest in the 14th general election to avoid multi-cornered fights.

“They should allow local parties to contest and contribute parliament seats to them to be able to capture Putrajaya.

“Whatever seats they have won in the previous elections, all they need to do now is just defend them in the forthcoming election. They don’t need to come here and increase more seats in Sabah,” he said.

Lajim who is now president of the Sabah-based Parti Harapan Rakyat Sabah said BN will win again if the opposition parties both state and national continue to divided, although all sharing the same goals of ousting the ruling coalition.

For instance, he said, BN would only need 3,500 votes to capture a constituency with 10,000 voters in a three-cornered fight, and even fewer if it was a six or five-cornered fight in GE14

Lajim said the people are looking forward towards the opposition working together, but the creation of new parties like Gabungan, Parti Cinta Sabah, Parti Warisan Sabah (Warisan) and Pakar, many are left confused which party they should support in the next election.

“It’s normal for the opposition to be fighting with each other. But the ongoing disputes could see the people losing confidence against the opposition.

“The voters are the one who will suffer. In the end, they would vote for BN again rather than cast their votes for parties which can’t cooperate with another,” he said.

On another development, Lajim said he was aware of the show-cause letter against him on having named Warisan president Shafie Apdal as the person behind the Project IC in Sabah.

A video shared on social media showed Lajim saying “the one who heads this dubious Project IC is the president of” followed by a bleep to cover the name.

The letter was handed to him yesterday by Warisan lawyer Norazmi Alimat and Lajim was given three days to clarify or deny to the demand, failing which Warisan will file for defamation.   

“Yes… I’m aware of this. But i have instructed my lawyer to ask for the video first before making any response,” he said.

Lajim and Shafie were both party mates in Umno previously. – August 9, 2017.