KOTA KINABALU: PKR Penampang deputy chief Kenny Chua Teck Ho had supported the call by Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun to change the name ‘Menggatal’ to ‘Manggatal’.
“As he correctly stated it, the language purists may have changed it on the belief that they’re correcting a misspelling,” he said in a statement yesterday.
“However, I also hope that the State Government would also consider changing the name of Kapayan state constituency (which lies in the parliamentary constituency of Penampang) back to its original name of ‘Kapazan’,” said Chua who is also the Kapayan Task Force chairman.
Chua said nobody seemed to know why the constituency had its name changed but as he understands there used to be a Kadazan predominant area (with large number of Chinese population) that lies just after the Kampung Bahang, known historically as Kapazan and located in the middle of the Kapayan constituency (DUN).
“There is no place in Penampang that has any connotation with ‘Kapayan’. Even in the previous state elections of the 70s and 80s, the area which we now refer to as DUN Kapayan was known as DUN Kapazan,” he argued.
Chua added that if the change was partly due to the mistake made during the electoral delineation exercise conducted by the Election Commission (EC), perhaps the State Government could do its part to rectify this matter by informing them.
“And I don’t think it will cause great trouble for anyone to have the DUN Kapayan be changed to Kapazan. In fact, this will be something which the Kadazans and Sinos in Penampang will be happy about because the reinstatement will reinforce their identity in this DUN.
“If a major town like Menggatal could see its name be changed, there should be no problem at all for a smaller area like Kapayan,” he added.