KOTA KINABALU, Sept 9 — A day before Warisan Plus is due to announce its candidates, Sabah PKR announced that it will contest 14 seats in the upcoming state elections, which is six more seats than the previous general election (GE14).
Its state information chief Simsudin Sidek said that the six new seats the party is contesting are all part of the 13 newly carved-out state constituencies.
Aside from Api-Api, Inanam, Tempasuk, Tamparuli, Matunggong, Klias, Sook and Kemabong, Sabah PKR will contest the new Segama, Limbahau, Sungai Manila, Membakut, Pintasan and Petagas seats.
“This time, we have tighter vetting to ensure we only put up capable candidates with integrity, and include new faces and women candidates.
“This is our commitment to return the mandate to the people and pay tribute to the state government,” said Simsudin in a statement today.
He added that PKR, as a multicultural party, had been part of Sabah’s struggle for equal rights since 1999 when it contested here for the first time and had contested three parliamentary seats then.
Sabah PKR also said it had performed well in the 2013 election by winning one parliamentary seat and seven state seats, and again in 2018 with three parliamentary seats and two state seats.
He said that in 2018, the party only contested six parliamentary seats and eight state seats, considerably fewer seats than before, because of its fellowship with Warisan and DAP.
“PKR in Sabah has over 170,000 people giving Sabah the second-highest member base after Selangor. That’s why we want to put our 14 candidates this time, a reasonable increase given that there is an increase of 13 seats,” he said.
Simsudin said that the party’s leadership had negotiated with Shafie this time around.
“As a longstanding multicultural party, PKR has aspirations of putting up Muslim natives, non-Muslim natives and Chinese candidates. We also want to have representation all over Sabah,” they said.
There had been rumours of a standoff in negotiations between PKR and Warisan when its president Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim put off announcing its candidates or the number of seats it was contesting during his visit to the state last weekend.
Some claimed he wanted to contest 25 seats, but state chairman Datuk Christina Liew said the figure was lower than was speculated.
Warisan is due to announce its candidate list tomorrow, including its allies — DAP, Upko and supposedly PKR.
