Kota Kinabalu: Parti Warisan’s appointment of woman lawyer Michelle Mok as its Coordinator for Api-Api state constituency is seen as an attempt to dislodge incumbent PKR’s Datuk Christina Liew who was a Deputy Chief Minister and Minister of Environment and Tourism in Datuk Shafie Apdal’s Cabinet, heading the Sabah Pakatan Harapan coalition in government with Warisan.
“Shafie was very disappointed with the electoral performance of PKR and Upko which demanded a lot of seats, but failed to win the majority of constituencies allocated to the two parties for GE14, which led to Warisan’s fall from power due to fewer assemblymen and defections. “ He likely tasked Datuk Junz Wong to engineer Warisan’s capture of some Chinese Malaysian dominated urban seats,” says political analyst Dr C.S. Voon.