PH offer ‘sheer audacity and a diversionary tactic’ — Soo
KUCHING: State Reform Party ( STAR) president Lina Soo has described Pakatan Harapan’s ( PH) revised ‘New Deal Agreement’ offering to retain the state’s oil and gas royalty at five per cent and an additional 20 per cent in oil profits as “sheer audacity and a diversionary tactic”.
Following the announcement on the new ‘5-plus-20 formula’ by PH Sarawak chairman Chong Chieng Jen on Monday, she also wondered in what capacity the Stampin MP as well as PH Sarawak deputy chairman Baru Bian amended the coalition’s election promise on oil royalty.
“Are YB Chong and YB Baru representing the Prime Minister, Economic Affairs Minister, Finance Minister and Petronas or are they acting as liaison officers between the federal and state governments?” she asked in her statement yesterday.
Soo alleged that such decision by PH Sarawak leaders only showed that they were desperately looking into every conceivable angle to help Petronas cover up its rapacious act of infringing upon Sarawak’s oil and gas resources.
She also questioned why the coalition, which had claimed to fight for 20 per cent oil royalty on production prior to the 14th General Election ( GE14), could now change what they had promised to 20 per cent of profit while also insisting that the state government pay for education and healthcare which are under the federal government.
“PH’s amended ‘ new deal’ is a ‘ no- go deal’. YB Chong and YB Baru are playing politics and using a distraction strategy with Sarawak’s resources because they do not have the gumption to address the real issue on the oil and gas ownership that rightfully belongs to Sarawak,” she argued.
On a related matter, Soo pointed out that Economic Affairs Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali’s recent statement claiming that oil royalty needs to be set at 20 per cent of net profit to prevent ‘ burying’ the Malaysian petroleum industry is welcome news to Sarawak as the state can manage its own petroleum resources, which it had been doing since oil was first discovered in Miri in 1910.
“Petronas is not indispensable to Sarawak and the state does not have to put up much longer with this nonsense from PH leaders to hold Sarawak to ransom over our natural resources within our territory.
“Petronas should stop hiding behind the sarongs of state PH leaders as any undercover tactic can never erase their secretive and shadowy operation style, as long as they do not open their accounts to public scrutiny,” she remarked.
She said STAR’s views have always been that oil and gas resources on Sarawak territory belong to the state and no PH Sarawak leader or excavator purporting to represent the federal government has any right to bargain with Sarawak landowners over its petroleum resources.
She added that the Petroleum Development Act 1974 and Territorial Sea Act 2012 are unconstitutional and unenforceable in the state and therefore called upon the State Legislative Assembly to convene a special sitting to legislate for the inapplicability of both Acts to Sarawak to put the matter to rest.