Ku Li in Sabah to gauge support

KOTA KINABALU: Former finance minister Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah was in Sabah for two days to assess if he can secure enough nominations and votes to take on Umno president Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
Tengku Razaleigh was among a crowd of leaders from the grassroots at a dinner here. Senior Sabah Umno leaders and division chiefs were absent.
“Division heads are usually too busy to meet me,” said Razaleigh who has offered himself to branch leaders to be the candidate for the president’s post, promising to be an agent of change for the party.
Razaleigh did not discount the possibility of picking a Sabah leader to run for senior positions like deputy or vice-president as he felt that a senior Sabah leader in higher position would help bring attention to their problems.
He added that he was prepared to meet Sabah’s demands for a review on oil royalty and questioned why Petronas was piping the gas obtained from Sabah’s offshore to Bintulu leaving the state's locals without any benefits.
Razaleigh also claimed that there was a huge deposit of oil found off Sabah that had potential of becoming one of the biggest oil fields that could produce a million barrels of oil a day.
Among those present was former Sabah Information Chief Datuk Karim Ghani who in his speech said that Umno needed a change in leadership for it to survive and win back the confidence of other races.

tunku : it's good idea to look supports in sabah but i think ku li should team up with muhyiddin to gain supports.for sure they will get majority support if they team up.as for sabah leaders, i think they should get one of the vice president post and ku li could identify one to put in the team.the best thing for umno is to get vice president who does not hold government post so that they can concentrate fully to rebuilds the party and put it back at the level it was before.