‘Don’t limit $14.9-B Malaysia ruling to Kiram heirs’

The ruling of a French arbitral court awarding almost $15 billion from Malaysia should not be limited to the heirs of Sultan Jamalul Kiram III but should include other sultanates of Sulu.

In an interview on “The Chiefs” on Cignal’s One News/TV5 on Tuesday, Sultan Dr. Ibrahim Bahjin Shakirullah II said the arbitral ruling should include the sultanates of Shakirullah and Alimuddín, not just the descendants of Kiram.

The descendants of the last sultan of Sulu are seeking to seize Malaysia’s state-owned oil-rich assets after a century-old claim of Sabah resulted in a legal victory.

Shakirullah, “catapulted” by people power to be the Paramount Sultan of all sultans of Sulu, said his clan is asking for reconsideration of the ruling as they were not represented in the filing of the case.

“It doesn’t include only the Kiram family as the heirs. There are also the other families, the families of the sultanates,” Shakirullah said.

“An agreement stated it should have included the other heirs to the sultanates,” he added.

After the legal victory, the descendants of the last sultan of Sulu are seeking to seize Malaysia’s stateowned oil-rich assets to enforce a $15-billion arbitration award that they won against Malaysia.

Malaysia said it had obtained a state order against the enforcement of the ruling.

Princess Jacel Kiram, daughter of the late Sultan Kiram, said injustice has been done to the Sultanate of Sulu when they leased the land given by the Sultanate of Brunei as a token of gratitude.

“We own the property but Malaysia is claiming that it’s their property. It’s clear it’s our property and that Malaysia needs to pay $14.9 billion for a property that we never benefited from, instead they benefited from it,” she said.

The decision made clear that Malaysia did not buy Sabah from the Sultanate of Sulu and it was a lease agreement, not purchase agreement.

Malaysia refused to participate in the arbitration. It said it had obtained a state order against the enforcement of the ruling.

The heirs of last Sultan of Sulu entered a deal in 1878 with a British trading company over the use of their territory, now known as the Malaysian state of Sabah.

Malaysia took over the arrangement after independence from Britain, paying a token sum to the heirs annually.

It stopped paying the Sultan of Sulu’s heirs their annual RM5,300 cession money since 2013, following the Lahad Datu armed incursion and argued that Sabah was part of its territory.

Phl claim

Meanwhile, an international law expert yesterday urged President Marcos to take a clear stand in asserting the country’s sovereignty over Sabah given a recent French arbitral ruling favoring the Sultanate of Sulu heirs.

Harry Roque, who also served as a spokesman for former president Rodrigo Duterte, said Marcos should “decide once and for all if the country’s position on Sabah remains a territorial claim of the Philippine republic or a proprietary claim of the Sultanate of Sulu descendants.”

Roque said the Sultanate heirs’ legal victory bolsters the country’s claim over Sabah.

“The Philippines has never given up its claim over the territory. I advise our President to clarify whether the country would actively pursue this claim or allow the Sultanate heirs to deal with the Malaysian government in private,” Roque said in a television interview.

He said the President should make a firm decision on this matter since the Sultanate of Sulu heirs ceded the sovereignty of Sabah, then known as North Borneo, to the Philippines in 1962.