KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 2 — Sabah caretaker chief minister Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal allegedly spread fake news and incited racial tensions through his recent speeches in the state, Tan Sri Musa Aman claimed today.
He accused Shafie of trying to smear him ahead of the early state election on September 26.
“In his recent campaign-like speeches, Shafie cavalierly threw baseless accusations, and unashamedly played the race card to confuse the public.
“All his speeches are nothing more than political rhetoric laced with inaccuracies based on pure propaganda. One may not be faulted for inferring that his speeches are riddled with racism.
“Spreading fake news has become the norm for Warisan,” Musa said in a statement today, referring to Shafie’s Parti Warisan Sabah.
Musa criticised Shafie and his administration, claiming Sabah’s economy only grew 0.5 per cent under the latter. He said this was listed as among the lowest in Malaysia for 2019 and showed the ruling coalition has achieved nothing of note.
Musa said that despite this, Shafie and the other state ministers still seemed content to open events and perform ceremonial duties at projects the former CM claimed were mostly initiated by his government.
“At best Warisan has mastered the art of announcing billion ringgit projects that have not seen the light of day.
“I must say Warisan’s KPI on making empty promises and spreading fake news is extremely high but I fear for Sabah if this is as good as it gets,” he wrote.
Musa then focused on a recent Shafie comment alleging that land belonging to Yayasan Sabah (YS) was given by the previous state government to a select few individuals, suggesting cronyism.
The former chief minister said Shafie’s motives behind making such comments were dubious, saying that a chief minister should be familiar with the policies of YA and its land by virtue of being the chairman of its board of trustees.
“As a sole licensee, Yayasan Sabah can only invite a third party to extract timber by Reduced Impact Logging (RIL) or develop its licensed area on a contractual basis,” he explained.
“I suppose for some politicians fake news, lies, smear campaign and character assassination is the only way for them to get elected,” Musa wrote.
Last week Shafie suggested in a speech that the preceding government had been selective and biased when awarding YS land, claiming that about 600,000 to 700,000 acres of its land was “missing” from its ownership.
