His party members would do well to recognise the reality that the former federal minister is only using them to fulfil his personal ambition, added Sabah Umno deputy information head Ramlee Marahaban.
He said Shafie’s self-appointed communications director Ismaily Bungsu had written a long piece on Facebook in defence of Shafie, stating that Shafie is a clean and courageous politician.
He said Ismaily should restrain himself and be more matured when playing politics instead of calling him (Ramlee) a “cow”.
“The use of foul language in his writing shows he is politically immature, emotional and shallow thinking.
“He spoke as if he is the expert on Sabah politics when he has never actually contributed anything to Sabah and its people.
“It is not my intention to put down anybody but ‘talk is cheap’. Anybody can say anything but doing something about it is something else,” he told FMT.
Ismaily, in his post, had chided Ramlee for saying that Shafie is a backstabber and ungrateful to Umno, a party that had helped him in the past.
Ramlee said as an Umno member, it was his right to defend the party’s integrity and the leaders chosen by party members.
“When Shafie was in the same ship, I never criticised him. But now he is Warisan president, fighting against Umno. Why should I praise him?”
Ramlee, who is also Bugaya assemblyman, said the notion that Shafie is a clean and courageous politician is only Warisan’s political rhetoric because if it is true, there will be no investigation against him.
The irony, he said, is that Shafie was actually dropped from the cabinet because there were too many complaints of corruption against him when he was the rural and regional development minister.
Furthermore, he said, Shafie only started mentioning 1MDB after he realised Prime Minister Najib Razak was going to replace him in the cabinet reshuffle in 2015.
“When he was in power, he was happy to praise the government to the moon. But when his ambition to become Sabah chief minister was not fulfilled, he started to rebel, accusing Najib of corruption and neglecting Sabah.
“He forgot that Najib gave so much to Sabah, including RM7 billion worth of projects under his own ministry. Not only that, Najib is the only prime minister who is open about the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63).
“Many of our leaders are in the cabinet with strategic posts to thank Sabahans and Sarawakians for their continued support towards BN.
“Can Shafie name any other prime minister who has paid so much attention to Sabah like Najib has?”
Ramlee warned Ismaily that Warisan is only Shafie’s stepping stone to achieve his ambition to become Sabah chief minister.
“I have known Shafie a long time. I know his game. Just because Ismaily is in the same party as Shafie now, it does not give him the right to call me a cow.”
He said if indeed it was true that Shafie wanted to contribute to Sabah, he should have done so when he was a federal minister and was given RM7 billion in funds to develop Sabah and Sarawak’s rural areas.
“But did he carry out all the projects properly? Even today, everybody wants to know what happened to the funds,” he said.
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