KOTA KINABALU, June 17 — Just a day after, Sabah PKR disciplinary chief Sazalye Donol has dismissed his party colleague’s claim that “thousands” of members will be quitting this Friday.
Sazalye scoffed at the rumours and pointed out that the man behind them is Datuk Karim Ghani who has been at odd with the state leadership and made similar threats last year.
“They want to make the party look bad, and making it seem as if PKR has no support among the people, but this is not true.
“We have over 170,000 members now, with more signing up,” he said.
He pointed out that Karim had in April last year made the same threat, that over 75 per cent of Sabah PKR members would leave the party. The reason given by the same group back then was the state leadership’s ignorance of their welfare.
“As of now, many of the people in his group have their membership suspended or are in question anyway,” Sazalye said, adding that they had openly contravened the party’s constitution by making public statements against other party members with the intention to shame them.
“In fact, Karim is the former chairman of the election machinery strategy committee,” he said.
Yesterday, Karim — who insists he is still Sabah PKR strategic and election machinery director — claimed some 5,000 state PKR members and grassroot leaders from various divisions will quit the party en masse this Friday in a show of protest against the Warisan-led state leadership in support of the Perikatan Nasional federal government.
Karim claimed leaders from Kudat, Tenom and Keningau were among on the exit list.
However, he qualified that there will be only 20 to 30 people at Friday’s event to announce their resignation due to the recovery movement control order (RMCO).
Sazalye said that anyone who publicly announces they are leaving the party will risk losing their membership automatically, and cited Article 9.1 of the party’s constitution.
He also laughed off Karim’s statement that only 20 people will be allowed to gather this Friday due to the RMCO, saying the group likely did not get the support they needed from the grassroots.
