KOTA KINABALU: Sabah STAR, a key component of the Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) coalition government, is firmly standing behind Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor amid calls for his resignation.
Sabah STAR president Datuk Seri Dr Jeffrey Kitingan said that his party remained firmly with the GRS coalition through the current crisis over the purported mineral licensing bribery scandal that implicated eight of its assemblymen.
Kitingan said this when asked about the Umno Youth treasurer Naim Moktar's call to Hajiji to step aside as Chief Minister and allow Kitingan, who is Deputy Chief Minister I, to lead the interim state government.
When contacted about Naim's call for him to take over as interim Chief Minister, Kitingan stressed that he did not want to be dragged into the alleged mineral licensing bribery scandal.
Naim, who is also Kinabatangan Umno Youth chief, had made the call, saying that the alleged bribery scandal involving the issuance of mining prospecting licences had badly hurt Sabah's image.
He said that there was a crisis of integrity, reputation and credibility facing the GRS state government after secretly filmed videos of a businessman allegedly talking about monies paid were uploaded.
The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) is investigating the videos and has recorded statements of the assemblymen including three state ministers.
Meanwhile, Opposition Parti Warisan information chief Datuk Azis Jamman said that GRS leaders should not play victim but answer the real questions of whether prospecting licences for minerals were used as "trade" for the support of assemblymen.
"The question about withdrawing the prospecting licences by the Chief Minister is not the main issue of the videos.
"The main issue is whether it is true or not that a certain amount of money was received by the leaders from the issuance of prospecting licences as a reward after giving their support to the Chief Minister.
"In the videos, the leaders are admitting it," he said in a statement Saturday (Dec 7).
He said none of the leaders had taken any steps to sue the whistleblower over the video which GRS continuously claims has been edited to put them in a bad light.
Azis said GRS should stop blaming the Opposition for the videos because the videos uploaded by the businessman involve GRS assemblymen and have nothing to do with the Opposition.
"This issue raises questions about the integrity of the GRS government," he added.
