The Verdict of People of Sabah
The people of Sabah have spoken loud and clear. They have voted decisively against Tun Mustapha and his years of misrule in Sabah, which denied the people the fundamental liberties of free speech, belief, association.
The decisive defeat of Tun Mustapha and USNO candidates should be a timely to all ruling parties that the people may be silenced, and surface harmony, unity and happiness manufactured, but the hearts and minds of the people cannot be won this way, and given the chance, the people would re-assert themselves.
The Sabah State General Election, in allowing the people of Sabah the opportunity to express their political views, is a healthy development.
However, while the people of Sabah have spokenly loud and clear in repudiating the years of misrule of Tun Mustapha, it is not certain what else the people of Sabah have said. It will be too presumptuous for anyone to claim that the vote of the people of Sabah, apart from repudiating Tun Mustapha and USNO, was a support for the Berjaya policies, for in the general elections campaign in Sabah, the battle was not a battle of policies0 it was a battle of personalities, a battle of one record of misdeeds matched against another record.
Berjaya must show that it is a serious political a party, completely different from UNSO, and set in motion a clean, incorrupt government dedicated to the upliftment of the people’s livelihood.
The first test for the Berjaya is whether it is sincere in wanting to have a clean, incorrupt and self-less government, marking a complete break from the Tun Mustapha rule. When the Berjaya was formed, it made as one of its contral plank of policies the demand for a Royal commission of Inquiry to investigate into all the corruption malpractices and maladminstratic in the Tun Mustapha government. This is necessary and vital, for it is only by learning the mistakes of the past that they will not be repeated.
How that Berjaya will form the Sabah State Government, it should be true to its stand, and should as its first item of business, introduce a motion in the new Legialative Assembly to formally request the Central Government for the institution of such a Royal Commission of Inquiry, or on its own set up a Special Committee of Inquiry. This is not witch-hunting, bit to restore integrity in public life and public service.