Amid Sabah scandal fallout, Kitingan threatens to pull STAR out of GRS?

Sabah's political temperature is set to rise further after Deputy Chief Minister I and STAR president Jeffrey Kitingan struck a defiant tone with Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim while at the same time he was seen in a short video clip threatening to take his party out of the Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) ruling coalition led by Chief Minister Hajiji Noor.

In a short video clip, Kitingan said his party would leave GRS while remaining part of the government.

"Yes, we will leave GRS but will still be with the government," he was heard saying in the clip obtained by MalaysiaNow. 

It is understood that Kitingan made the statement after attending Sabah STAR's ninth anniversary celebration yesterday, where he claimed that recent allegations against him were part of efforts to destabilise the state government.

The clip comes on the back of another video linking him to a mining licence corruption scandal.

When asked, an official close to Kitingan told MalaysiaNow that the statement had been taken out of context.

"He was talking about something else totally not about GRS," the officer added.

MalaysiaNow has been trying to get an explanation from Kitingan himself.

Meanwhile, addressing party members yesterday, Kitingan also pressed Anwar for an explanation over a maritime deal with Indonesia that was heavily criticised by opposition MPs two years ago.

The agreement included the oil-rich Ambalat block, a 15,000 sq km area off the coast of Sabah that has been at the centre of a territorial dispute between Malaysia and Indonesia.

"I’m disappointed to learn that this is happening. If this decision was truly made without consulting Sabah, then it is not good. It is another way of bypassing our rights," Kitingan said.

In August 2023, MalaysiaNow reported that maritime experts involved in efforts to protect Malaysia's territorial rights had warned Putrajaya against signing any new agreements to settle the long-running border dispute with neighbouring Indonesia.

They said Malaysia could not afford to compromise on its claims over disputed areas with Jakarta in the Sulawesi Sea and the southernmost part of the Straits of Melaka.

Latest politician implicated in mining scandal

Kitingan is the latest figure to be implicated in a series of incriminating video clips released by businessman Albert Tei showing Sabah state assemblymen discussing bribes ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of ringgit.

He has denied allegations that he received RM1.78 million in connection with the Sabah mining scandal.

Kitingan's STAR is part of the Hajiji-led GRS, a coalition currently at loggerheads with the state's Umno leaders and allied with Anwar's increasingly fragile federal government in the hope of surviving Sabah's highly fractional politics.

The series of videos released by Tei, first published by news portal Malaysiakini late last year, has so far implicated more than a dozen state assemblymen, including senior Sabah ministers and a state assembly speaker.

After months of pressue on the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to speed up investigation, two Sabah assemblymen were charged on Monday.

Despite calls from lawyers and anti-graft activists for the authorities to protect him as a whistleblower, Tei himself was charged alongside Sabah assemblymen Yusof Yacob and Andi Muhammad Suryady Bandy with the offence of receiving and giving bribes totaling RM350,000 in connection with mining permits.

 Tei has however lashed out at MACC for selective prosecution, and questioned why only the "small fries" were charged while other "sharks" identified in the videos are still at large.

Last month, Tei's lawyer Mahajoth Singh warned Azam Baki against "cherry-picking" corruption cases after the MACC chief said that "one or two" individuals seen in the videos would be charged.

Mahajoth said there was "clear and consistent evidence" against at least eight other people.

Azam was earlier reluctant to pursue investigation, stating that the videos were "edited" and therefore not credible as evidence.

Following this, his predecessor Latheefa Koya submitted full and unedited version of the video clips, reminding MACC that it had no reason not to act.