TAWAU -- Sabah Pakatan Rakyat endured another round of shock today when ten Tawau DAP leaders including publicity chief James Leong Yun Fui (picture) have quit and joined Gerakan, a Barisan Nasional (BN) component party.
This came barely twenty four hours after Pakatan coalition partner, PKR's Sabah chief, Pajudin Nordin threw in the towel before joining UMNO.
The resignation of the DAP leaders was announced by Gerakan vice-president Liew Yun Fah at a Chinese New Year open house here today. The group handed their Gerakan membership application forms to Sabah BN chairman and Chief Minister Musa Aman who passed them over to Liew.
Leong said they had lost confidence in the party leadership who were only good at talking and incapable of delivering their promises.
He said only BN was capable of bringing development to the people via the 1Malaysia concept introduced by Prime Minister Najib Razak.
Musa said the resignation of DAP leaders proved that the opposition had failed to solve the people's problems and rendered them irrelevant to Sabah.
He was confident that more DAP leaders and members would leave the party to join BN component parties.
Meanwhile, Liew said the resignation was a positive sign that BN could recapture Sri Tanjung state seat from DAP.
He said the Chinese community had realised that only BN could bring them development and champion the people.
The series of resignation would have dealt Anwar Ibrahim with a major setback, and may signal a crisis within the coalition rife with infighting and now face a crisis of confidence. The loss in the Tenang by-election have prompted the national pakatan leadership into some deep soul searching but a solution to stem the haemorrhage is nowhere in sight.
Pakatan leader, Wan Azizah has been tasked to reverse the tide but currently may have to contend with the excuse that a little blood-letting from within its fold may indeed be good.