Monday, July 21, 2008

MONDAY 21 JULY 2008- I WAS NEVER UNGRATEFUL TO UMNO, SAYS MOJIGOH


I was never ungrateful to Umno, says Mojigoh

KOTA KINABALU:

Putatan Member of Parliament (MP) Datuk Dr Marcus Mojigoh has decried claims by Putatan Umno Chief Datuk Yahya Hussin that he was ungrateful to Umno. “I was never at anytime ungrateful to Umno,” Mojigoh said when commenting on Yahya’s statement which said that Putatan Umno despite its disagreement that the Putatan Parliamentary seat was given to “others”, had worked very hard resulting in the Barisan Nasional’s victory. Yahya when officiating the annual meeting of 141 Umno branches in the Putatan division on Saturday, said Umno wanted its sacrifices to be recognised by other BN component parties and they should reciprocate th Division’s huge sacrifice. He was quoted as saying, “But at times our sacrifices have gone unnoticed and even our sincerity questioned. It is like the case of ‘kacang lupakan kulit’ because sometimes they question what is ‘ketuanan Melayu’ (Malay supremacy).” Yahya who is also the Sabah Umno Secretary, repeated his call for the Putatan parliamentary seat to be allocated to Umno. Mojigoh in response to the Deputy Chief Minister’s claims, said that Yahya’s desire to be the Putatan MP was not something new as he had made it public a couple of times before. “He (Yahya) personally asked me to give up the seat for him as he wants to be an MP before retiring,” Mojigoh said, adding that the Agriculture and Food Industry Minister had also declared his intention when handing over the key to new occupants of houses at Taman Ketiau. Yahya, he said, repeated the call to Deputy Prime Minister cum Umno Deputy President Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak during the Putatan Umno Division’s annual meeting last year. “He is repeating the request to me, it is a normal thing. But to give the reason that I am ungrateful to Umno is not true and if he regards my urging Pak Lah to tell the Party’s young turks to slow down on the ‘ketuanan Melayu’ issue as ‘kacang lupakan kulit’, then that is gross misinterpretation of what I said,” Mojigoh said. There was no. ill intention in the statement, he said, adding that what he said was that Umno members i were merely slowing down on the ‘ketuanan Melayu’ issue as some people were not comfortable about it. “If that is considered ungrateful then what else is?” he said before pointing out that he mixes with a lot of people with many sets of opinion and these intellectuals are from different racial and religious backgrounds. Most of the Chinese intellectual friends of his asked him to say something, especially the reasons of the political tsunami, he added. According to Mojigoh, Sabah is a multi-racial, multi-religious State and people here know for a fact that the issue of ‘ketuanan Melayu’ is supreme in Peninsular Malaysia. “Are we in the same situation as in the Semenanjung? The Bajau, Dusun, Murut, Brunei, Bisaya, Rungus, Iban, Melanau, Dayak are they not ‘tuan’ too? After all we all are adoring our same King, the Agong,” he stressed. Mojigoh said that as leaders, they must strive for moderation and get rid of issues that can be interpreted as extreme. “We leaders understand the position of Malays in our Federal Constitution but the grassroots does not understand that fully so we have to approach it tactfully. “If that statement is unacceptable to some leaders, then the spirit of BN is waning. I have no problem whether the Putatan seat is given to him I also have no right to be the MP candidate in the next election S lt not for me to decide. We maintain to be nice and they ask for one we give them all after all we are prepared - to be enslaved for the Rakyat’s sake,” he said, adding that his loyalty and support is still very much with BN and would, irrespective of being nominated as a cardidate or not, still vote for BN and whoever the candidate might be.

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