A ‘smoke screen’, Chong says of London trip by state’s legal team
KUCHING: State DAP chairman Chong Chieng Jen has described the Sarawak legal team’s upcoming trip to London to study the state’s rights under the Malaysia Agreement 1963 ( MA63) as a ‘smoke screen’ and ‘delaying tactic’ to cover up the failure of state Barisan Nasional ( BN) in delivering the state its autonomy they had repeatedly called for before.
He also opined that it was “utmostly ridiculous” that the state government did not have the document which gave the state the necessary status and power to join in the formation of Malaysia.
“After 54 years of Sarawak independence and the formation of Malaysia, we are now telling the world that we do not know how we came about and that all these years, we did not know our powers and rights until we need to go to another country to find out the power of Sarawak,” he told a press conference at state DAP headquarters here yesterday.
He claimed that whatever rights Sarawak may have in the past have since been surrendered by the state BN to its federal counterpart through the constitutional amendments, enactment of laws and approval of budgets which were done with the consent of state BN all these years.
Depicting the state legal team’s trip to London as a “history tour”, the Kota Sentosa assemblyman said fighting for Sarawak’s autonomy is “more about setting the present and future agendas”, for instance, what power Sarawak wants.
“One example is the passing of the resolution in the State Legislative Assembly ( DUN) demanding for 20 per cent oil royalty. Such resolution is to make clear what Sarawak wants. Yet, three years after we made clear of what we want, BN Sarawak still cannot get it from the BN federal government.
“Fighting for Sarawak’s autonomy is not about history lessons, about what we used to have that we have surrendered through BN Sarawak’s submission to Umno,” he stressed.
Though he foresees that the state legal team will come back with some documents, he believes that the state government will need a lot of time to study them and thereafter it will then need further documents and further trips to UK or even the United Nation and more time to study the matter.
“It will take years and years of finding and studying the documents while the agenda ‘autonomy for Sarawak’ will be put on hold pending the finding and studying of those documents.
“The whole thing about the ‘legal team to UK’ is just a show by ( Datuk Amar) Abang Johari and his team and the Umno or BN to delay the issue of ‘true autonomy agenda’.”
As for DAP, Chong said the party has promised that within 100 days of taking over the federal government, they will return the 20 per cent oil and gas royalty to Sarawak.
“We even promised to return to the state government 50 per cent of all tax revenues collected in the state so that Sarawak has the financial autonomy.”
He added that to achieve autonomy for Sarawak, all it takes is political will and the governing number in the parliament.