A Sabah state general election that will decide not only who will be the Chief Minister of Sabah, but the future of the Prime Minister of Malaysia

The voters of Sabah go to the polls today to decide not only who will be the Chief Minister of Sabah but the future of the Prime Minister of Malaysia.

No Prime Minister has campaigned so hard in the Sabah state general election as Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

He never visited Sabah in his first six months of office as the illegitimate eighth Prime Minister of Malaysia.

But for the Sabah state general election, he visited Sabah four times, the first time before state election campaign on 29 and 30th August and thrice during election campaign from Sept. 12 to 26.

In the process, Muhyiddin has turned the Sabah state general election into a national one, especially after Anwar Ibrahim’s media conference that the illegitimate Muhyiddin government has fallen as he (Anwar) had the numbers to become Prime Minister.

A strange thing happened in the Sabah state general election - Muhyiddin did not have the support of all the political parties in his backdoor government.

This is most poignant and conspicuous with the absence of the UMNO President Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and the Sabah Barisan Nasional Chairman Bung Moktar Radin at the grand finale ceramah of Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) at Kampung Sendil, Petagas on Thursday nightl

Muhyiddin wants Hajiji Noor to be Sabah Chief Minister if Shafie Apdal is toppled, but UMNO wants its Sabah Chairman, Bung Moktar for the post.

The bickering, conflicts and contradictions in GRS “alliance within an alliance” continued from Nomination Day to Polling Day, despite the truce between PBS and STAR brokered by the Bersatu Secretary-General and Home Minister, Hamzah Zainuddin but who was reduced to pleading to the GRS parties “alliance within an alliance” on the eve of Polling Day to stay focussed on resolving their clashes over 15 seats.

But the “truce” forced on PBS and Star, which compelled PBS to surrender its sacred birthplace of Tambunan, which gained celebrity in 1984 in a by-election standing to oppression from a repressive and cruel State Government was a great disaster.

It marked the rise and fall of PBS and the extent PBS was prepared to go to sacrifice its political shrine of Tambunan to another party just for the sake of winning a few seats!

One UMNO MP after another has come out to say they will not support Anwar as Prime Minister reiterating “No to Anwar! No to DAP”!.

I was mystified why these UMNO leaders had such intense antipathy for DAP – but now I can understand, for the DAP stands as a mirror to their corruption, kleptocracy and kakistocracy

That is why they are prepared to go to extreme lengths to persecute DAP Secretary-General Lim Guan Eng on trumped-up corruption charges, for they would then be able tell the people that DAP leaders are no different from UMNO leaders in their corruption and abuses of power.

My final advice to Sabah voters: Save Sabah Save Malaysia! Save Malaysia Save Sabah!

The future of Sabah and Malaysia are intertwined and inseparable.

As Shafie Apdal said in billboards all over Sabah: “In God We Trust, Unite We Must!”

Lim Kit Siang MP for Iskandar Puteri