Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) vice-president Gee Tien Siong said with a host of Umno MPs leaving the party, the ruling coalition may achieve its two-thirds majority.

“Is this a sign that Sabah and Sarawak are getting closer to regaining their autonomy or the opposite?

“Even the Sabah coalition government (Warisan-PH-Upko) has gained a two-thirds majority in the Sabah assembly.

“The Sabah government should, therefore, express its stand on the return of Sabah’s rights as an equal partner in Malaysia under Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63),” he said today.

Gee said now is the time for the federal government to return the “one-third veto power” in Parliament to each equal partner in Malaysia – Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak.

The “one-third seats” in Dewan Rakyat was part of constitutional safeguards for both states listed in the Inter-Governmental Committee (IGC) report, which was the document for the nation’s founding, he added.

“If the rights and status of Sabah and Sarawak are not returned, even if the government controls a two-thirds majority in both Parliament and the state assembly, it’ll be an extension of the Barisan Nasional-Umno era, dubbed BN 2.0,” he said.

He said the federal government must be fair to both the resource-rich states.

Otherwise, Sabah and Sarawak will again remain backward and impoverished, lacking in development in many aspects when compared to Malaya, Gee said.

A group, comprising five MPs, nine assemblymen, two senators and over a dozen Sabah Umno division heads, left the party last Wednesday.

This was followed by six other MPs in Peninsular Malaysia, reducing Umno’s parliamentary seats from 54 to 37.

All those who left are reported to be inclined towards supporting PPBM, one of PH’s four component parties.