KOTA KINABALU: Parti Gagasan Rakyat Sabah vice president Masiung Banah is set to defend his Kuamut seat for a fifth term, even as opponents question his plans to create a modern kampung in Tongod district.
Masiung has brought together four key parties under Gabungan Rakyat Sabah to work on a single platform to defend the seat for the coalition.
He said division leaders of Parti Bersatu Sabah, Sabah Star and Usno have joined him to prepare for the election and have jointly briefed agents for each polling district in Kuamut.
“They have been briefed and given training for the coming election,” said Masiung, who is Sabah Town and Housing Development Board chairman.
“Our mission is to win the seat for Gabungan. We, the coalition component parties, have been on the ground for the last three years,” said Masiung, who won the seat in the 2020 snap state election as an independent and later joined Gagasan Rakyat headed by Hajiji, who is also Gabungan chairman.
As Masiung prepared for the election, local Parti Warisan wanita chief Norfaizah Chua questioned his recent announcement of a pilot modern model village, SMJ Tongod, in the Kuamut constituency.
Norfaizah said the concept for such a village was similar to the controversial communal title grant scheme, which was stopped by the Warisan government in 2018 and replaced with the issuance of individual native titles.
“The concept for the modern village is not much different from the communal grant scheme which marginalised the land rights of indigenous people,” said Norfaizah, who is a potential Warisan candidate for Kuamut.
She said Masiung and the Gabungan government should focus on the multiple cases of overlapping land applications faced by Sabah natives and the issues of eviction from native lands instead of talking about grand modern village schemes.
“What is the point of promising modern villages if at the same time, Sabah natives are still being evicted from their own customary lands?” said Norfaizah.
