RESTORING SABAH AND SARAWAK’S LOST RIGHTS
There needs to be a permanent mechanism where the prime minister and chief ministers of both states meet regularly to discuss matters affecting the three parties
THE prime minister finally delivered what many in both Sabah and Sarawak had wanted to hear. On the first Malaysia Day under a Pakatan Harapan-led Federal Government, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad announced in Kota Kinabalu that his administration will restore recognition of both the Borneo states as “equal partners” that brought about the new Federation of Malaysia 55 years ago.
Malaysians in Sabah and Sarawak have felt hard done by after discovering a latter-day constitutional amendment that appeared to have relegated both to the status of each of the 11 states in the peninsula instead of being founding members together with the then Malaya of the expanded federation in 1963.
It can be argued that the “delayed” reaction of Sabahans and Sarawakians to that amendment may be the result of accumulated resentment of and a collective backlash against years of creeping political centralisation that generally went against the spirit of the Malaysia Agreement of 1963 (MA63).
The idea of a federation is always a necessary compromise between full sovereignty of individual political entities and shared responsibilities (or “solidarity” in the parlance of the European Union) assumed by the Federal Government over such matters as foreign, internal-security (home) and defence matters.
Nine of the peninsula states have hereditary rulers who were historically and remain even today more than symbolic repositories of their respective states’ sovereignty and identity.
Sabah and Sarawak are little more than mere bystanders during meetings of the Conference of Rulers which deliberate, among other things, on important matters of state over religion and various appointments.
Sabah and Sarawak have only MA63 to fall back on to preserve their own unique political identities. It is perhaps understandable that they have grown to become somewhat hyper-sensitive over any perceived or real “erosion” of their “rights” over the past 55 years.
If restoring of their status as equal partners in the Malaysian federation is to be of any real meaning, there is possibly a need to have a permanent mechanism akin to the Conference of Rulers, meeting regularly among the prime minister (representing the Federal Government and, possibly, the peninsula states) and the chief ministers of Sabah and Sarawak on all matters affecting all three parties.
It is interesting that the prime minister said as almost an afterthought that constitutional amendments require a twothirds majority support in Parliament. Left unspoken but probably serving as a useful reminder is the fact that Sabah and Sarawak MPs themselves let the relevant and now disputed amendment pass unopposed in 1976.
It also highlights the fact that “equal-partner” status is largely only of symbolic significance if it does come about. Sabah and Sarawak collectively lost the outright power to block any constitutional amendment affecting them when Singapore’s leaving denied them the one-third of parliamentary seats in order to do so.
In today’s more fractured political landscape wherein any federal government securing a twothirds majority may no longer be just a matter of course, votes and alliances (whether piece-meal or more permanent) will have to be canvassed for any cause dear to Sabah and Sarawak.
Sabah and Sarawak, therefore, will need to play a much more sophisticated game deciding what is only desirable against what is more consequential in the overall scheme of things. They must, above all, accept that the respect they so crave can only be earned, not demanded.
Malaysians in the peninsula, on the other hand, should no longer take for granted that the Federal Government knows best in matters pertaining to Sabah and Sarawak.
Nothing riles Sabahans and Sarawakians more — and gives their love-hate antipathies to the rest of the country greater sustenance — than a sense they have been and are still being patronised to.
What is unfortunate is that hardly any statesmen from either Sabah or Sarawak or the peninsula have come forward to give their considered, non-partisan take on what, if anything, truly ails the federation.
The future of Malaysia is far too important to be left entirely to mere politicians to deliberate and decide. If left entirely to them, chances are they will just feed on and off the populist impulses that course dangerously through such a vital discourse about the state of the federation.
Perhaps, what is needed is a group not unlike the Council of Eminent Persons advising the government on economic matters to delve deep into the whole issue and come up with disinterested prescriptions on the best way forward for this federation for the next half century and beyond.
The idea of a federation is always a necessary compromise between full sovereignty of individual political entities and shared responsibilities (or ‘solidarity’ in the parlance of the European Union) assumed by the Federal Government over such matters as foreign, internalsecurity (home) and defence matters.
The writer views developments in the nation, the region and the wider world from his vantage point in Kuching, Sarawak