Sabah opposition leader Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal wants everyone to stop pretending a support letter is some kind of smoking gun.

The former Sabah chief minister says all he ever did was help desperate folks who walked into his office — many from rural outposts like Tongod or Keningau — clutching nothing but hope and a request for help.

“What matters is the content. I didn’t approve anything,” Shafie said, referring to the viral letters which have linked to undocumented migrants. 

Shafie said this when met by reporters upon his arrival at the Kota Kinabalu International Airport on Wednesday where he was welcomed to some 100 party supporters.

The authority, he reminded, lies with the National Registration Department. Not him.

The letters, a political hot topic in Sabah, have become the new rallying cry for his critics. 

Shafie believed that if leaders are to be judged for helping citizens (or stateless individuals) find documentation, then the same scrutiny should be applied to those handing out mineral prospecting licenses — and the money allegedly given to politicians in the attempt to make it happen. 

The Senallang Assemblyman was referring to the Sabah mining scandal.

“There’s a difference between a support letter and a letter that leads to mining rights. 

“But apparently, giving sedekah during Ramadan is more scandalous.”

He’s referring to accusations of vote-buying after he distributed alms during Ramadan while drawing comparision to the acceptance of cash by sitting assemblymen linked to the mining scandal. 

The Warisan president also reminded everyone that during his tenure, he teamed up with then-Chief Justice Richard Malanjum (now Tun) to launch mobile courts to reach stateless children. 

“Some people walk into my office without identity cards. Do I throw them out? What kind of leader would I be?” he said.

Shafie believes Sabahans aren’t as gullible as his political rivals would hope, especially when criticism over the support letters starts to mirror the way the proposed Sabah Temporary Pass (PSS) was weaponised against his party in 2019.

“You can’t fool Sabahans all year round,” he said, drawing a straight line between the latest attacks and the ghost of PSS 

He says real issues like water shortages, failing rural clinics, and the rising death toll from preventable diseases are being buried under political smokescreens.

“People are dying from heart problems and diabetes because they can’t afford private healthcare or even the trip to Queen Elizabeth Hospital.”

 “We’ve got a RM50 billion health budget. Where is it?”

He then turned to rural Sabah, where some hospitals still sit on wooden stilts — a visual metaphor for the state of planning, or the lack thereof.

The future, he says, should be about the next generation — not political survival. 

“I’m not important. Your children are. Your grandchildren. That’s who we’re fighting for.”

He said many Sabahans are trying to make ends meet Peninsular Malaysia — some 200,000 of them, officially — he worries that others, especially young women, may be enduring conditions no one dares working out of the state. 

“It’s very sad. Sometimes, you don’t even want to say out loud what’s happening.” – April 9, 2025