KOTA KINABALU: Don’t blame Warisan for your losses, Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal told his former allies in Pakatan Harapan.

The Warisan president said that the split in votes that saw both Warisan and Pakatan parties lose their seats had nothing to do with Warisan going solo in the election.

“Everyone seems to blame us for their losses. Pakatan, Barisan Nasional and Perikatan Nasional all blame us for not joining them,” he said.

“The blame game will always be part of political dynamics and in fact, I too can say the same about Pakatan who contested in seats held by Warisan such as Penampang, where we could have retained it if not for Pakatan’s challenge there,” Shafie said during a press conference yesterday.

“We have to move forward.”

He said that Warisan’s ultimate goal was to be part of the government and to make the agenda it has been fighting for, including the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63), a reality.

Shafie also said that when Warisan was with the Pakatan government they had tried to bring the issue of MA63 to Parliament to have an amendment in the Federal Constitution to restore the status of Sabah and Sarawak tabled and passed.

“However, our colleagues in Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) did not support it as there were some clauses that they did not agree with,” he said.

On another issue, he said the election result in GE15 was not the end of the road for Warisan that only managed to secure three out of the 52 parliamentary seats they contested nationwide.

Shafie said Warisan’s next focus was to secure their structures, divisions and machinery, especially in the newly expanded areas in the peninsula.

He said for the party itself, they realised that some factors contributing to their defeat included the wave of change and political tsunami and change of support from Chinese voters to Pakatan.

On the party’s plans in Peninsular Malaysia after none of its 26 candidates won any seat, Shafie said that some seats Warisan contested saw good support but were not enough to win.

“What we need to do is to set up a proper party structure like setting up branches and divisions,” said Shafie.

He also said that for Sabah, the concern was that the dominance of peninsula-based parties was quite huge.

Shafie said Upko, PBS and Sabah STAR only won one or two seats and that was a concern for Sabah as a whole if it wanted to get back more autonomy for the state developments.

“We have to start preparing and strengthening ourselves because the state would have to go for its state elections in less than three years when the term ends,” he said.