KOTA KINABALU, Sept 25 — Parti Makkal Sakti Sabah chief Datuk A. Nagaraju as refuted Borneo India United’s claim that the Indian community in the state are in full support of Parti Warisan Sabah (Warisan).
Nagaraju was referring to the recent statement made by Borneo India United, whereby the latter had said that the Indians in Sabah were in favour of Warisan to remain as the state government.
“They said that the Indian community supports Warisan. That’s wrong. Not all of them support Warisan. Maybe it’s just a handful of them,” he said in a press conference yesterday.
Nagaraju said there are a quite number of ‘old timers’ in the Indian community who have been supporting Barisan Nasional (BN) for a while now.
The party believes that Borneo India United shouldn’t take credit for what their state chief had done in the past, especially when it comes to the Migration Fund Board issues.
Nagaraju had also brushed off Borneo India United’s claim that the Indians in Sabah, who are mostly professionals, are currently facing no problems in Sabah.
He revealed that there are two groups of Indians in Sabah, the first group is comprised of professionals (such as teachers and doctors) while the other is comprised of labourers who were sent to Sabah from the peninsula back in 1968 to 1972.
He said some of the Indians in the second group had managed to return to the peninsula and are living a stable life while some are facing problems here, such as documentation issues.
Nagaraju further disclosed there are around 4,500 Indian voters in Sabah but his party had only managed to identify about 2,500.
However, he said this figure did not include the Indian Muslims as some of them had adopted Muslim names which made it difficult to trace them.
He said more than 500 of these voters are from Kota Kinabalu while another 300 are from Sepanggar.
“In Kota Kinabalu, Api-Api has around 200, Likas has 143 while Luyang has 174.
“Meanwhile, in Sepanggar, Karambunai has 119, Inanam has 74 and Darau has 110,” he disclosed.
Despite being the minority in Sabah, Nagaraju opined that the Indians could play a vital role in the outcome of the election as he predicted that some of the seats would be decided by a slim majority.
The party had also encouraged the Indian voters in Sabah to think wisely before casting their votes tomorrow. — Borneo Post Online
