KUALA LUMPUR, March 25 ― Malaysia United Democratic Alliance (Muda) is discussing with Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal’s Parti Warisan Sabah to spread the latter’s influence in Peninsular Malaysia.
Muda vice-president Mutalib Uthman told The Malaysian Insight that both parties however have yet to reach any formal agreement, but just in talks to work together.
“We are in discussion with Warisan to help the party become a national party and spread its wings to Peninsular Malaysia.
“We don’t have a formal agreement yet, just initial discussions for us to find common ground to work together. There may be issues that we can discuss and fight for together,” he was quoted saying by the news portal.
He added that Muda has started discussions with Warisan representatives since last week via video calls, and any formal agreement would be announced at a later date.
“We only started talking about working together this week, we haven’t even met in person, all the meetings were done via video call.
“The top guns in Warisan, the party’s vice-president, its secretary-general and the youth and women wing leaders were involved in the discussion,” he said.
He added that Muda was the one who approached Warisan to trigger the talks, but nothing can be done yet since the Registrar of Societies (RoS) has yet to recognise Muda as a political party.
Mutalib then insisted that Muda is in the Opposition bloc, but not together in the Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition.
“We will not follow Perikatan Nasional. We support Syed Saddiq to become the next prime minister, but this has not been discussed so far,” he reportedly said, referring to party president Syed Saddiq Abdul Rahman.
Last December it was reported that Warisan’s decision to expand to West Malaysia was made on its own because it feels it can provide an alternative to the current ethnic and religion-centric politics, one of its party leaders said.
Its secretary-general Datuk Loretto Padua Jr, who was responding to critics, said that the decision was not influenced by former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, and was made independently to spread its concept of unity.
