The war of attrition between Sabah Progressive Party (Sapp) president Yong Teck Lee and his former deputy Raymond Tan Shu Kiah, one of the state's three deputy chief ministers, continues almost unabated.

raymond tan shu kiah The latest salvo has come from Tan, who is still partyless after resigning from the party last year when Sapp pulled out of the ruling Barisan Nasional to become an independent party.

The DCM through his press secretary claimed on March 1 that eight branches of the party in Karambunai would be joining the Tan group on the ground they disagreed with the party's decision in withdrawing from the BN.

This was immediately refuted by Yong, who is also Sapp Karambunai constituency central liaison committee chairperson. The Sapp chief, who is a former chief minister, in a statement to Malaysiakini today, said that to date none of the 2,446 members in the 23 registered branches in the constituency has resigned from the party.

yong teck lee and sapp Yong said information gathered by party officials revealed that about 200 members from eight branches of Sapp in the Karambunai state constituency were invited by the political secretary to the chief minister to a dinner with the party-less deputy chief minister at a five-star hotel in Kota Kinabalu last week.

However, only the chairman of Kampung Tobur branch, Matney Musah, who is a government servant, and two of his members turned up.

Tan's desperate move

Yong also pointed out that while Tan’s press secretary claimed that 25 Sapp Karambunai members met with the deputy chief minister, the group photo nonetheless showed only a total of 15 persons, excluding the deputy chief minister and his three aides.

The other persons appearing in the photo consist of four non-members, one Umno member and six unidentified persons.

Yong thus described the recent news report published on March 1 in some local newspapers, as yet another desperate move by Tan to cling on to his current position in the government.

“It is generally known that Tan is desperately trying to hang on to his post of deputy chief minister by convincing his political master that he enjoys popular support to form his new party,” the former chief minister said.

Yong said if those Sapp members were really unhappy about being out of the BN, then they would have left a long time ago, and not only now, six months after Sapp pulled out from the BN.

“Everybody knows that a lot of efforts and inducements have been used by Tan and his agents to entice Sapp members to join their futile efforts to keep Tan in office for his own personal agenda,” he noted.