The deputy chief of PKR's Batu Sapi division, Amir Bak, and 200 other members of the division today quit the party to join Umno.    

The division's vice-head Abdullah Madu and seven committee members were also among those who quit.

All them handed over their Umno membership application forms to Umno deputy president Muhyiddin Yassin when the deputy prime minister performed the groundbreaking ceremony for a people's housing project in Lupak Meluas here.

In an immediate reaction, PKR Batu Sapi division chief Hassnar Ebrahim said he was not surprised by the defection.

"Both of them have been enticed by Umno to jump in the 2003 state elections. They have no interest in politics, they only want money."

Hassnar pointed out that the pair were unhappy with the committee's decision to field Ansari for the Batu Sapi by-election.

"They are nobody in the party. Let them be. It won't affect anything."

They have just won their posts

Hassnar revealed that both Amir and Abdullah recently won their posts in the party's division elections under his camp.

"They won because there is nobody else in the party. They came to me, so I had them under my list," he said.

Meanwhile, 50 Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) members from five of its divisions in Batu Sapi also quit SAPP to join Umno while Dr Francis Chong, who contested the Batu Sapi seat as an independent candidate in the 2008 general election, announced that he would be joining Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS), a BN component party.

The PKR and SAPP members said they were doing so because they had become disillusioned with their respective parties.