Leiking: PKR in Sabah intact despite Jeremmy's defection

PKR’s sole parliamentarian in Sabah today slammed his former colleague Jeremmy Malajad for abandoning the party’s struggle but maintains that Jeremmy's personal choice will not harm PKR'sfuture in the Borneo state.

Penampang MP Darell Leiking wrote on his Facebook that the voters in Kadamaian rejected BN in the 13th general election (GE13) because “they opted to end the current system of incompetency, leakages, discriminatory practices and racist politics which are currently engulfing the whole nation under this regime”.

Kadamaian assemblyperson Jeremmy, a first-term representative, won the seat with a slim majority of 889 votes against BN heavyweight Herbert Lagadan. And this, said Leiking, was only because Jeremmy represented PKR.

Taking the defection in stride, Leiking (left) said he would now muster help for Kadamaian from his own constituency.

“We must rebuild this together as the trust of the people in us is paramount,” he added.

According to Bernama, Jeremmy said he saw the BN government as being successful in tackling various issues in Sabah, including security and poverty.

Leiking said while it was true that BN held the purse strings in Sabah, the government had an obligation to serve all and that it could not deny the opposition wards of development needs.

Jeremmy was among seven PKR assemblypersons voted into the Sabah state assembly in GE13.

Meanwhile, Sabah’s PAS Youth leader Lahirul Latigu also condemned Jeremmy’s move as “an act of sabotage”.

"Such moves lower our dignity and is shameful to Sabah politics... it makes it seem as if Sabah politicians can be easily bought, have a low standing and no integrity,” Lahirul said in a statement.

Instead, Jeremmy and his kind of fickle politicians, he said, should just quit the state assembly altogether and return the power to the people to choose their representatives again.

Lahirul added that PAS also urged the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to investigate whether any foul play was involved in Jeremmy’s crossing over to become a BN-friendly Independent.