DAP tells Kenny Chua to speak up on Sabah mistreatment instead of pointing fingers

Peter Saili

25 Nov 2021

By Wartawan Nabalu News

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah DAP Deputy Chairman Peter Saili said STAR Sabah’s vice president Kenny Chua should be speaking up about the mistreatment of Sabah in the recent federal budgets instead of pointing fingers at the opposition.

Peter said Chua and his party being part of the federal and state governments should voice up about the matter to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yakob and Finance Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Zafrul Aziz if they are sincere in safeguarding the interest of Sabah.

He was responding to Chua’s statement who accused the party of planting hate politics to get Sabahans on its side.

Recently, Secretary-General Lim Guan Eng mentioned that Sabah was being treated worse under the Nasional (BN) and Perikatan Nasional (PN) when the state only received 6.9 per cent of development expenditure while Pakatan Harapan (PH) allocated 9.3 per cent during its governance.

“It is a bold truth that the Barisan Nasional-Perikatan Nasional (PN) federal government is mistreating Sabah in the recent federal budget.

“Sabah is only receiving 6.9 per cent of the development expenditure under the 2022 Budget while Pakatan Harapan allocated 9.3 per cent during its governance,” said Peter in a statement today.

Peter also stated that the federal government is responsible to answer why the special grant amount that has been doubled by the PH government to RM 53.4 million reversed back to RM 26.7 million by the BN-PN administration.

“This special grant amount was doubled by Guan Eng who was the finance minister during his tenure, it has remained stagnant for decades under the administration of the BN government and now the new federal government decides to reduce the special grant back to square one.

“If the Sheraton Move did not happen, Guan Eng and the PH Federal Government would've been able to increase the special grant under Article 112D to at least RM100 million in five years’ time,” he asserted.

He said Chua is selectively telling the truth to the public and trying to sweep the incompetence of his government under the rug as he did not mention the special grant as well as the sales tax imposed by the Warisan-PH state government on petroleum products in the state that generated RM 1.25 billion revenue for Sabah.

“This is solid proof that the PH-Warisan government was striving to increase the budget for Sabah that BN has failed for the past 50 years.

“The PN government has also not done anything, why shift the blame to PH while the people clearly know that PH has done much better in comparison to BN and PN?” he said.

“I advise Chua to focus on helping Sabah to recover its economy from the previous wave of COVID-19 outbreak triggered by his defection.

“He and STAR should focus on serving and recovering the economy after many have suffered financially and socially from the pandemic,” he added.