Datuk Peter Mojuntin and Batu Sumpah
I WAS at the airport in Tanjung Aru on the June 6, 1976 at about 4 pm getting ready to catch my flight to Kuala Lumpur.
I was returning to Universiti Pertanian Malaysia (UPM) to resume the third semester in Diploma in Animal Health and Production.
The airport was a little quiet and when I checked in for my flight; I noticed that the MAS counter staff was very quiet.
When I asked why it was not the usual atmosphere, he told me that a plane had just crashed at Sembulan. He did not say anything more.
I only found out later that Sabah Chief Minister, Tun Fuad Stephens, Datuk Peter Mojuntin and several Ministers had perished in the crash when I arrived and met up with a group of Sabahans in the campus. It was one of the saddest moments in my life.
I had decided to leave after I completed my Lower Sixth Form at Sabah College in 1975, got a job as a reporter with the Information Department and went out to the villages at the periphery of the Crocker range to cover for Datuk Peter Mojuntin, a Minister under the USNO government.
We started the trek from Mile 28 KK-Tambunan road down to Kg Longkogungan, Buayan and Terian before exiting at Kg Kaiduan in Kinarut.
It was a 10-day official visit by Datuk Peter to these outlying villages in his constituency of Moyog.
It was during this excursion that I had the opportunity to be close to him and had a special admiration when I saw him mingling with the villagers.
I remember seeing, from the flickering light of the kerosene lamp, white maggots crawling on his face and he just wiped them away with his palm.
He was drinking ‘talak’ with an elderly woman and eating the ‘bosou’ as the ‘pusas’. I knew those maggots were from the fermented meat.
Then he noticed that I was watching them and told me that “you better get to sleep now as we have a long trek tomorrow”. In June 1975, I was already enrolled in UPM.
The trek was fantastic and I remember starting from the source of the Papar river walking along the river to all the villages.
Many a time we had to cross the river which was crystal clear and swift. I remember seeing so many big fishes which I learned from the other members of the entourage to be ‘ikan pellian’.
I forgot that I had registered my name in a visitors’ book in Terian until a villager told me that he saw my name in the book.
He told me this at the height of the political campaign in 2008, when I was a PKR candidate for Penampang.
I lost to Tan Sri Bernard Dompok, but I managed to secure more than 10,000 votes - a fantastic result for a ‘greenhorn’.
Although there were few hundred votes in these outlying villages, I was so pleased and happy to have made a good fight. I thought maybe the villagers had continued to remember this young boy with Datuk Peter Mojuntin who came by their villages in 1975.
In 1978, a book was published entitled ‘Peter J Mojuntin – The golden son of the Kadazan’ authored by a DAP lawmaker from Malacca, Bernard Sta Maria. I remember having a copy of the book, but looking for it became desperate when the Federal government banned it.
To me, the book was an inspiration to every Sabahan but more so to let the younger generation know this man.
Rightfully, Peter’s bronze statue stands elegantly at Donggongon township. As a politician and looking up at his statue, I can feel and see that his political mission, although disrupted abruptly, must be fulfilled.
Maybe the five core objectives outlined by Henrynus Amin’s Parti Anak Negeri have captured the essence of the unfulfilled mission of the golden son of the Kadazan.
I asked the Sabah government on their position in regard to the banning of the book, ‘The golden son of the Kadazan’.
The government replied, permission to publish and print a book is under the Home Ministry. As far as the ban is concerned, the Sabah government does not want to get involved in something which is outside the Sabah government’s legal jurisdiction.
After that, I did write an appeal to the Home Ministry to lift the ban on this book but until now there has been no response from the Minister.
As the then chairman of the DAP Native Consultative Council, I took the opportunity to raise the profile of the oath stone or ‘Batu Sumpah’ in Keningau.
Personally, I did not know about this stone until I went over to see it at the District Office compound in Keningau.
I was then tipped that the plaque on the stone had been changed with the three words ‘Kerajaan Malaysia Jamin’ missing or nowhere to be seen.
I then made a police report for an investigation to be carried out as to who had changed the plaque and to find out where the original plaque is kept. A few months later, it was reported that the original plaque had surfaced in a village in Keningau.
In April 2016, I asked the government if they are going to gazette the oath stone as a State Heritage since the Federal government has done so earlier by making it a National Heritage.
While the government recognizes the importance of the oath stone, the State government does not support the erection of replicas of the oath stone on the premise that it is against the native laws.
I have asked earlier for the government to erect a replica of the Batu Sumpah at the compound of the Sabah Assembly.
The State government has assured me that after the oath stone has been relocated to its proper site, the process to gazette it as a State Heritage under the Sabah Heritage Enactment (Rehabilitation) 1997 will take place.
I know the federal allocation of about one million ringgit has been approved for the relocation and improvement of the site.
We shall all wait and see when this ‘mission’ will be accomplished and if the original plaque will finally return to its proper place.
The Sabah government has informed me that all the three guarantees; namely, freedom of religion in Sabah, land under the Sabah government control and respect and preservation of native cultures and traditions are being fulfilled.
That is the government’s perspective. On the contrary, many believe that all three guarantees have been eroded and there was therefore a need to establish a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) whether the aspirations of the natives have been fulfilled as per the three guarantees by the Malaysian government engraved on the Oath Stone.