Anwar cancels Sabah trip, cites floods as reason

KOTA KINABALU: PKR president Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has canceled a planned trip to Sabah on Sunday (Dec 18), a day after his party was wiped out in the 12th Sarawak election.

Anwar’s visit was widely anticipated to see PKR sever ties with Parti Warisan Sabah led by Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal.

The Sabah PKR office said Anwar had to cancel the trip as he had to attend to the flood situations in Selangor.

His office also mentioned that Anwar apologised for the cancellation of planned events here and the inconvenience caused.

He urged the public to stay safe during these challenging times.

Prior to Anwar’s arrival for his programme in Penampang, Sabah PKR leadership council deputy chairman Mustapha Sakmud said the party should cut ties with Warisan if it continued to make provocative statements.

Mustapha, who is also Sabah Pakatan secretary, said members within the coalition and Opposition allies should not be fighting against each other and instead help one another to strengthen their ties.

Warisan is not a member of Pakatan Harapan and earlier this year had said that it no longer had official relations with Pakatan.

However, the parties worked on common interest as an Opposition bloc but relations were strained when Warisan refused to sign the MoU with the government in September.

PKR is part of the Pakatan coalition which signed a six-point MoU with the Federal Government, led by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob, in September to, among others, preserve political stability and transformation, paving the way for a new political landscape based on bipartisan cooperation.

Anwar’s scheduled visit was announced a day after Warisan launched the party’s expansion to Peninsular Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur on Friday (Dec 17).