Datuk John News Today

IT is a RM64 million question. Who wants to be poor? Not a single Sabahan would. But many politicians have destined Sabah to be poor. Why do I say this? Sabah is a glaring contradiction. Very resource-rich, yet the number of Sabahans living in dire poverty is shameful. So welcoming to other Malaysians, to the extent of being exploited wholesale.

January 2023=22,510, December 2023=17850, March 2024=13,179 These official figures are dramatic manifestation of Hajiji’s efforts to reduce hardcore poor in Sabah from January 2023 to 1st Q 2024. Impressive results.

Those of us who are in their 60 and older will remember the glorious days of Sabah from the 60s to mid-80s. The golden era of Tun Mustapha and Tan Sri Harris was to be remembered and relished.

I THANK PAM’s Chapter Chairman for giving me a copy of his open letter in reply to my Sunday article prior to its publication in DE.

In any society, professionals are the crème di la crème. Rightly so as they are better educated, professionally qualified, technically proficient and intellectually superior.

MANY times, I have appealed to Sabahan political leaders to focus on economic development for Sabahans, especially for Sabahans in the B40 [Likely Sabah has B70!] who are in the vast majority. They should refrain from selfish politicking to benefit themselves. Discouraging response so far.

ABSOLUTE MUST FOR SABAH TO RESOLVE URGENTLY. Sabah has many economic challenges, most of which are being addressed with various stages of progress.

Sabahans have lost at least two generations of economic development. I have written a few times on Sabah’s unsatisfactory economic development in the Daily Express in the last several years. I would encourage Sabahans to be vigilant and continue to stay alert on anything that are not to their satisfaction, that are not working well.

Presuming that CM Datuk Seri Hajiji will call for a general election in 18 months’ time, there are a lot of months, days and hours to go. I can appreciate if Shafie Apdal or Bung Mokhtar, they are not being in government, want to start politicking now but, to their credit, they are not doing it. I kowtow to them for that.

IT is good, extremely good that Hajiji has asked Loke to upgrade KKIA on 26th January 2024.