Umno supreme council member Abdul Rahman Dahlan has challenged the party's former Sabah elected representatives to resign their posts and re-contest seats under Bersatu.

This came after Sabah Bersatu chief and Sulaman assemblyperson Hajiji Noor - whom himself had defected from Umno to join Bersatu - claimed that Sabah Umno was in denial about its flagging popularity.

“It’s easy to find out whether Bersatu is accepted by the people of Sabah or not,” Rahman said in a Facebook post today.

“Any elected representatives who had defected, please resign and hold a by-election in the constituency they had contested under the Umno/BN ticket before.

“We shall see if they can still win or not,” he said.

Earlier today, Hajiji was reported to have said that many Sabah Umno members had joined Bersatu, but their names still appear on their former party’s membership rolls and Umno is in denial about their exact numbers in the state.

“They (Umno leaders) should have stopped with the denial syndrome, and instead go inspect and do an overall clean-up of the names of former party members.

“Because there are Umno members who had actually left and joined Sabah Bersatu, but their names remained as an Umno member.

“There are not many Sabah Umno members left after the migration tsunami into Sabah Bersatu,” the Borneo Post quoted him as saying.

Hajiji (below) reportedly claimed that at least 2,000 to 3,000 people are joining Bersatu’s four-month-old Sabah chapter daily, and a majority of them were former Umno members.

He was reportedly responding to Umno vice-president Ismail Sabri Yaakob’s claim that Sabah Umno is still strong and many former members have expressed intention to rejoin the party.

Hajiji also touted DAP’s victory at the Sandakan by-election in May as proof of Bersatu and Warisan’s growing strength in the state. 

“The Sandakan parliamentary by-election has proven it, when Sabah Umno claimed to have 9,000 members and voters in the constituency who will vote the contesting Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS), but it did not happen because the Umno members concerned have left the party and joined Bersatu and Warisan,” he was quoted as saying.

However, Rahman countered that the Sandakan by-election should not be used as a measure of Sabah Umno’s strength.

This is because the parliamentary constituency is not a seat traditionally contested by Umno, he said.

Previously, the seat was contested DAP and the Liberal Democratic Party, the latter a BN component party until its withdrawal from the coalition on May 11 last year following the outcome of the 14th general election.