SANDAKAN – Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) deputy chairman Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia today downplayed the possibility of a state election next year, saying the chief minister’s remarks on the matter had been taken out of context.
Pandikar said Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor’s supposed hint that polls would be held next year, well before the end of his administration’s term in October 2025, were only a reminder to party members to work hard and be prepared at all times.
“(Hajiji’s) statement has been played in social media and also by the media as if he is hinting at a snap election. People are debating whether the Sabah election is to be held next year and questioning the stability of the current GRS-PH Plus government.
“But that is immaterial because the Sabah election is going to be held (in 2024 or 2025) anyway,” Pandikar said today at a GRS Women programme here, where he represented Hajiji.
Pandikar, who is also United Sabah National Organisation president, was commenting on Hajiji’s statement last month during Parti Gagasan Rakyat Sabah’s first annual conference in Kota Kinabalu, after which news reports quoted the chief minister as saying that early state polls could be a possibility.
Sabah last held a state election in September 2020.
On the GRS Women event, Pandikar said the number of women candidates in the coming Sabah election would be increased, as it was time to stop treating the women’s wing as “second and third-class members”.
“Women’s thinking ability and efforts are the same as men’s. In fact, I see that there are a lot of women who are more mature, wiser and smarter than our existing male people’s representatives,” he said.
GRS Women head Datuk Seri Azizah Mohd Dun and the wing’s Zone 5A coordinating head Yvonne Yong Yit Phung both said at today’s event that they hoped for more women candidates in the next state election. – December 3, 2023