We must depend on ourselves: Yong's call

Politicians in Sabah do not know what they are doing, said Sapp president and Batu Sapi candidate Yong Teck Lee.

The former chief minister pointed out that Sabah is plagued by bad political culture that is excessively dependent on orders from the federal leadership.

"(The situation) now is a dependency on Kuala Lumpur. People who have been up there for so long are arrogant, and a lot of our leaders do not see the real reason why they are in politics," he said in an a recent interview.

"In our Sapp training course, the first question is why you are in politics. Only then we ask why you want to join Sapp. They must get this right... if you get this wrong, you have funny ideas, then the rest will go wrong," he said.

Yong, (left) who is contesting an election for the first time after nearly 10 years, defended his decision to pull his party out of the BN in 2008, pointing out that it is not a flip-flop like PBS led by its president Joseph Pairin Kitingan.

"I have not moved as much as Datuk Pairin. He's jumped from Berjaya to independent, from independent to PBS, then joined the BN and left the BN, and again joined the BN and left the BN and now he has joined the BN again.
"Whatever you do, it must be for a good reason and for the people," he said, justifying Sapp's decision to go it alone as an independent party.
'What have Musa, Pairin done?'

On BN's attacks that he had not achieved anything as chief minister, Yong shot back ,specifically at current Chief Minister Musa Aman and Pairin, who held the post from 1987 to 1994, saying both so far hold the record of the longest serving chief ministers.

"Datuk Musa has seven years, Pairin has nine years. Combined they have 16 years. None of the other chief ministers have served more than two years. Combined (under the rotation system), maybe they have seven to eight years.

"What have they (Musa and Pairin) done? Ask them this," he said.

Yong(standing extreme left in photo) also denied that his party's Sabah for Sabahans slogan is an "old issue" as described by deputy premier Muhyiddin Yassin, saying that it remains relevant as a function of the federal system practised by Malaysia.

"Kelantan has its own laws on autonomy, Johor had its private army under the Sultan, to visit Sarawak you still need to go through immigration... this is a federal system.

"Component states are allowed a higher degree of autonomy and for Sabah and Sarawak our autonomy is based on the 1963 (Malaysia) agreement. It does not jeopardise the function of Malaysia as a country.
"In fact, if the central government interferes too much in the state government, they will get into a lot of problems. People don't understand this such as in parliament, so that will be my job, to make sure that parliament will hear this," he said.