Yong promises to win back Elopura, Tanjung Papat seats

The Borneo Post Online

Yong promises to win back Elopura, Tanjung Papat seats 

SANDAKAN: SAPP president Datuk Yong Teck Lee promised to win back two seats lost when Au Kam Wah and Datuk Raymond Tan parted ways with the party.

“We lost Elopura and Tanjung Papat state seats. In the coming general elections, we will win them back,” he said in an interview with The Borneo Post at SAPP Sekong office in Taman Sibuga.

Yong was responding to a question as to whether SAPP has lost their ‘Fixed Deposits’ strongholds and ‘safe’ state seats when Tan and Au announced their decisions to be independent assemblymen after pulling out of the party.

“Sabah political leaders including Sabah Umno minister such as Datuk Masidi Manjun and others have given their views about the harmony and unity of our ethnic groups.

“Ethnic groups in Sabah and Sarawak have very good relations with one another. They are not beset by racial and religious polarisation as in Peninsular Malaysia,” said Yong on a proposed law which supposedly would be called ‘Race Relations Act’.

“Still, we worry that the increasing racial problems in the peninsula might get ‘imported’ to the east,” he said.

He recalled that in the 1970s and the 1980s, ‘Mr Opposition” Datuk Tan Chee Kun (now deceased), was one of the few leaders from the peninsula who openly said that in terms of harmony and unity, Peninsular Malaysians have a lot to learn from Sabah and Sarawak.

To him, this means that big political parties like Umno, MCA and MIC all behaved and functioned along racial lines.

“It would defeat the intentions of such a law,” he said.

“What SAPP proposes is non-racial politics where we consider the problems of other communities as our problems.

“The major parties should gradually abolish racial politics, which is much better than any race relations law.”

Earlier on, Yong joined directors and committee members of SRK Tai Tong in a earth-breaking ceremony for a school building.

Yong was on a two-day visit to meet his members in Sandakan, boosting up confidence after the pullout of Elopura and Tanjung Papat state assemblymen.