'Can't win one seat let alone state' - Puad razes Hadi's Sabah dream

'Can't win one seat let alone state' - Puad razes Hadi's Sabah dream


Published: Sep 2, 2024 1:36 PM


Umno supreme council member Mohd Puad Zarkashi believes that PAS will not be able to win even a single seat in Sabah let alone capture the state.

Responding to PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang’s Merdeka message, he described the call as nothing more than bermimpi di siang hari (daydreaming).

Puad (above) urged PAS to “merdeka” or free itself from the practice of toxic politics, which include labelling political rivals as dajal (demons), “anti-Islam” and so forth.

Without mincing words, the Umno leader also accused PAS of being a “coloniser of backward political religious mindset”.

“This colonisation has been happening for a long time as if PAS is Islam and Islam is PAS.

“The people need merdeka (independence) from this deviant religious politics,” he added in a Facebook post.

‘Significant inroads’

Yesterday, Hadi stressed that to achieve “complete merdeka” for the nation, significant inroads must be made into Sabah.

“To implement this, we must win (outright) in Sabah or there must at least be seats that we win,” Hadi said in a statement on Facebook last night.

PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang

He added that the last general election showed many Umno members and young people voting for the Islamist party to the extent that it was able to govern in four states.

At present, PAS has one assemblyperson in Sabah, Aliakbar Gulasan, who was appointed in September 2020 when Perikatan Nasional was part of the state government.

In the past, the Islamist party had fielded candidates in Sabah but had failed to win a single seat.

Speculation about early state polls began last year but now it is likely to be held in 2025.