Is Ansari a Musa plant?

SANDAKAN: Days into the Batu Sapi by-election campaign and a new scenario has surfaced. Is there a secret pact between Chief Minister Musa Aman and candidate Ansari Abdullah to finish off for good Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) president Yong Teck Lee?

Is this the reason PKR has remained quiet over Musa's scathing dismissal of Yong's call to a debate on Sabah? Is this the reason Umno has been less derisive of Ansari than of Yong?

Now political observers are asking why the PKR camp let Musa off the hook by watering down Yong's initial challenge to Musa, the opposition's main target.

"PKR shouldn't have done that," said a former politician who requested anonymity.

"It's as though PKR wanted to take the heat off Musa and Barisan Nasional. Is it a ploy?"

Yong has been a painful thorn in Musa's side dating back to the days of prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

And Yong is also, if not more, a serious threat to (Sabah) DAP – a Pakatan Rakyat coalition partner.
Yong casts a long shadow over Sabah's Chinese community.

In fact, if current ground response to Yong's name is any measure, he is indeed the people-savvy “taiko” that the media has made him out to be.

But unlike Sabah DAP, Yong's reach is not limted to just the Chinese. Response to his roadshows here in Muslim Bumiputera areas in the run-up to the Batu Sapi by-election is rousing.

Here, Yong is also a threat to PKR, which is seen as nothing more than a spoiler to the real tussle between SAPP and BN candidate Linda Tsen.

Whatever may be said of Yong's political 'shenanigans and past failures', to the man on the street he's been the most familar face since 2008, when as then chief minister he boldly pulled SAPP out from the Sabah BN government on a matter of principle. A threat perhaps to Umno-BN?

In the murky world of Sabah politics, famed for its betrayals which spawned the term “katak”, we may yet again see strange bedfellows.

Aman family

So what's in this Musa-Ansari pact?

Given his close ties with the Aman family dating back to the 1990s, comments on the blogs place Ansari as a “Musa plant” in which case Umno and PKR, at least at state level, are in cohorts against Yong.

A politically dead Yong would be a blessing for Sabah BN and a guarantee of Musa's hold on Sabah.

Ansari has a chequered past. He left Berjaya and joined the newly formed Sabah Umno in the 1990s. He quit Umno in the late 1990s and joined Bersekutu, a newly formed local party said to be linked to former Berjaya leaders.

Anifah Aman, who is Foreign Minister, was allegedly supposed to join him (Ansari) in the new party but for some reasons changed his mind.

Still, their friendship didn't end there. Ansari's name has time and again been linked to the Aman family.
Perhaps it is just coincidence that everytime Anifah went on official visits to Indonesia, Brunei or China, Ansari was also away.

Perhaps it is just speculation about Ansari's “consistent flow of cash” since his legal practice on the fringe of Kota Kinabalu (where he is based) is allegedly “low key”.

Some observers view Ansari's political moves as opportunistic. They've also speculated that Ansari's link to the wealthy Aman brothers is the reason he has PKR vice-president Azmin Ali's support.

"Ansari knows where and how to get the money. In the last general election, he was loaded. He even bought a brand new four-wheel-drive after he came back from China. Some PKR leaders were asking where he got the money.

"That's why people say he is being fed by Anifah. Anifah was in China at the time of Ansari's China trip too," said a source.

Loyalty issue

This has raised suspicions among some PKR members about Ansari's loyalty to the party.
His most recent statement denying a pact between Sabah PKR and SAPP and claiming that PKR was prepared to “give way” to SAPP to contest against BN on a one-on-one basis came as a surprise to party insiders.

"When Anwar (Ibrahim, PKR de factor leader) asked Yong to step aside... it was clear that PKR was moving in. There was no question of giving way to SAPP.

"If that was the idea, then Anwar would have waited till after the joint meeting. When both parties met they had agreed the common enemy was BN... and they were aiming to break BN's support.

"But somewhere between that joint meeting in Penampang and now, things have changed," said a PKR insider, who added that rumours of Sabah money being channelled to support certain leaders in the current PKR party elections were also rife.

Meanwhile, the notable absence of PKR Sabah's point man Jeffrey Kitingan in Ansari's campaign has also further fuelled rumours of a probable “Musa-Ansari pact”.

"Jeffrey doesn't work with him (Ansari)... and there are many other leaders here too who avoided him... isn't that strange?" asked a PKR supporter.  By Michael Kaung