PAKATAN Harapan chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad is confident the opposition coalition can win half of the 25 parliamentary seats in Sabah at the 14th general election. 

He said Sabah and Sarawak have become very strong territorially.

“They have expressed dislike for domination by peninsular political parties.  

“If we go there, it will look as though we are trying to dominate them and we don’t want that, we want to work together.

“We have in Sabah a party which is very supportive of us. At this moment, I think we can win half the number of the parliamentary seats in Sabah,” he said at a town hall session titled “Charting our future” at Yayasan Perdana in Putrajaya.  

Sarawak was slightly different, said Dr Mahathir, as it had always liked to be on the winning side.

Earlier in a Facebook live session with The Malaysan Insight, Dr Mahathir Barisan Nasional could no longer depend on Sabah and Sarawak to win in the 14th general election after failing to fulfil the needs of the two states, said Dr Mahathir.

“The two states are no longer BN fixed deposits. They are now more concerned for their own areas. 

“It is because the federal government is weak and cannot fulfil the needs of Sabah and Sarawak. 

“During my time, they were 100% with my government,” he said. 

Dr Mahathir was responding to a question on what PH planned to do to win voters in the two states. 

Research by Merdeka Centre in May has shown that the majority of people in Sabah are feeling the pressure of a softening economy and want autonomy for the state to administer itself and its own finances.

The majority of Sabah folk also do not wish for a split from the federal government, but want more freedom from Putarajaya. 

Sabah and Sarawak contributed 55 parliamentary seats out of the 134 won by BN in GE13. 

Dr Mahathir said so far Sabah and Sarawak had not shown any inclination for separatism.  

“We have to face the fact that they don’t think they are fully part of the Malaysian scene. 

“We have to allow them to find their own strength and how they can do things for themselves, but at the same time we always want them to be part of Malaysia,” he said. 

Meanwhile, DAP veteran leader Lim Kit Siang said a shift of 5% support  from urban voters and 10 % support from rural voters would enable PH to wrest Putrajaya from BN. 

“We must prevent a fallout and maintain the voters’ support and then we might even take over more states,” he said. – September 6, 2017.