Musa charged that Shafie, who is caretaker chief minister, was becoming increasingly desperate as the latter had resorted to “spreading blatant lies and slander in his bid to hold on to power”.
He claimed Shafie, in his recent campaign-like speeches, had thrown baseless accusations and “unashamedly played the race card” to confuse the public.
“Spreading fake news has become the norm for Warisan,” he said in a statement today.
“Recently, Shafie charged that the previous state government had purportedly given land belonging to Yayasan Sabah to a selected few.
“Clearly Shafie’s intention is highly questionable because as chairman of the Yayasan Sabah Board of Trustees, he should have known that this cannot be true because the Yayasan Sabah-licensed area cannot be alienated to a third party.
“As a sole licensee, Yayasan Sabah can only invite a third party to extract timber by reduced impact logging (RIL) or develop its licensed area on a contractual basis.
“I suppose for some politicians, fake news, lies, a smear campaign and character assassination are the only ways to get elected.”
Last week, a Sabah businessman had rejected allegations made by Shafie about the disappearance of state land belonging to Yayasan Sabah.
The businessman, Mohemad Amin Azizurahman @ Amin Khan, said various people had accused him of being a thief and a robber after Shafie made the allegations in his previous speeches, which were widely shared.
Amin said Shafie had alleged that he had received 30,000 acres of land in Kalabakan from the Yayasan Sabah foundation, and that about 600,000 to 700,000 acres of the foundation’s land was “gone”.
He had said: “I have never obtained 30,000 acres of land from Yayasan Sabah at any point in time. As far as I am aware, concession land areas held by Yayasan Sabah are all under one licence and it is impossible for such areas to be ‘gone’ or given to any third party. These areas will always remain under Yayasan Sabah.”
In his statement today, Musa questioned Shafie’s motive for making allegations that certain communities were favoured by the previous government when it came to awarding land.
“One may not be faulted for inferring that his speeches are riddled with racism. Warisan has not achieved much since they unconstitutionally took the government which was lawfully formed after GE14.
“With only a GDP (gross domestic product) growth rate of 0.5%, the lowest in Malaysia for 2019, Shafie and his ministers seem happy to spend most of their time performing ceremonial duties and ribbon cutting to officiate projects and programmes which were initiated by the previous government,” Musa claimed.
Musa said, at best, Warisan had mastered the art of announcing billion ringgit projects that had not seen the light of day.
“I must say Warisan’s KPI (key performance index) on making empty promises and spreading fake news is extremely high but I fear for Sabah if this is as good as it gets.”