PETALING JAYA: Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin (claims) has refuted claims that Perikatan Nasional betrayed Barisan Nasional in the 2020 Sabah state elections.

The Perikatan chairman slammed former Barisan chairman Datuk Seri Najib Razak, for allegedly twisting facts and accusing Bersatu of being a traitor in the Sabah state election.

“The fact is, there is not a single seat where a Bersatu candidate was fielded to go against Umno in the Sabah state elections,” said Muhyiddin, in a statement late Thursday (Feb 3) night.

“There is a blessing when Bersatu does not work with Umno as Bersatu won’t become entangled in the moral problems plaguing Umno leaders,” he said.

“Personally, I’d be ashamed to be associated with a party that embraces someone, who has been convicted by the courts of a serious crime, as a ‘boss’ (referring to Najib’s social media tagline of bossku),” said Muhyiddin.

Najib on Jan 30 had said that Perikatan’s decision to betray and contest against Barisan Nasional in the 2020 Sabah elections led to the fallout with Bersatu in Muafakat Nasional.

Najib added the incident occurred less than three weeks after the invitation letter, for Bersatu to join the Muafakat coalition, was signed in August 2020.

Muhyiddin added, as Perikatan chairman and Bersatu president, he had chaired series of meetings which were attended by the leadership of Perikatan, Barisan and Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) to discuss seat allocations in Sabah.

“I mentioned it clearly in those meetings on the importance for Perikatan, Barisan and PBS to avoid any fights against one another in the state polls,” he said.

Muhyiddin added that he had ordered Perikatan’s secretary-general Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainudin to form a committee on seat allocations between Perikatan, Barisan and PBS.

“I was informed that in the initial stages, the committee had decided a number of allocation of seats to be contested between the parties. However, Barisan then increased its number of seats that they wanted to contest and this had caused a clash with Perikatan in several seats,” claimed Muhyiddin.

“On Perikatan’s side, the seats involved were contested by STAR and not Bersatu. In a few other seats, there were clashes between Barisan and PBS. PBS had also fielded their candidates in seats which were contested by STAR causing some clash between PBS and Perikatan,” said Muhyiddin.

On the Sabah chief minister candidate issue, Muhyiddin said that he had asked Umno president Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi to submit a name from Umno, but the latter did not do so until the end of the state elections.

“That is why I named Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor as the Sabah chief minister candidate from Perikatan if the coalition wins the biggest number among the parties that formed Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS),” added Muhyiddin.

He added that Bersatu had already decided not to join Muafakat.

“I’ve already forgotten about Muafakat. There’s no need to bring it up anymore,” he said in a statement.

“After all, Umno also decided during its general assembly (last year) not to work with Bersatu. So what is there to bring up?”