Will Rody keep Sabah promise?

TENSIONS RISE

We are allowing proprietary heirs to talk. Since it is part of our claim, it will be there as our land

The long simmering dispute on Sabah would not lead to a confrontational war as other drum beaters have projected, the heirs to the Sultanate of Sulu assured on Tuesday.

But the renewed campaign for Malaysia to recognize the sultanate as the rightful owner with the heirs bearing ancestral rights to the island should be settled through a government-to-government dialogue.

This was made clear by the Sulu Sultanate’s Prime Minister or Wazir Amroussi Rasul, who stated that the Philippine government must help find a peaceful resolution to the sultanate’s cause.

Rasul said support must come from no less than President Rodrigo Duterte, who made the

Sabah claim as one of his campaign advocacies in 2016.

“Settlement of the Sabah issue is among the campaign promises made by President Duterte during the last presidential elections,” Rasul stated. “The Tausug people will not forget his promise that he will give his full support to the Sabah claim.”

Duterte had vowed to defend Sabah’s sovereignty. There are about 500,000 Filipinos in the oil-rich island.

“We are allowing proprietary heirs to talk. Since it is part of our claim, it will be there as our land,” Duterte said then.

“What has been the policy will always be the policy of the government especially those for the interest of the country. We have to stake our claim,” he added.

But also in 2016, then Malaysian, Prime Minister Datu Seri Najib Tun Razak vowed to quash efforts to reclaim the island from Malaysia, citing Sabah had gained independence through Malaysia as recognized by the United Nations in 1963.

Then in July this year, newly-appointed Malaysian Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein confirmed that Malaysia has stopped paying the cession money of RM5,300 ($1,255.92) a year through lawyers representing the nine heirs of the Sulu Sultanate since 2013.

Hussein said the payments were made based on a treaty signed on 22 January 1878 between the then Sultan of Sulu Jamalul Alam and Baron de Overbeck and Alfred Dent of the British North Borneo Company.

Sabah eventually became part of the Malaysian Federation as one of its 13 states in 1963, although the Malaysian government recognized the British North Borneo Company’s pact.

Apart from the payments to the heirs of the Sulu Sultanate, Malaysia has never made any payment to the Philippine government.

The Philippine government never had a part in the agreement.

But even before Malaysia had become a federation, President Diosdado Macapagal and the Philippine government claimed the territory of North Borneo on 2 September 1962, and the full sovereignty, title and dominion over it were “ceded” by the heirs of Sultan of Sulu, Muhammad Esmail E. Kiram I, to the Philippines.

Diplomatic relations were broken by the Philippines with Malaysia after the federation was formed with Sabah in 1963. Their diplomatic ties resumed only in 1989.

But Malaysia also continuously paid the Sultanate of Sulu cession money despite these tensions.

“Apart from the payments to the heirs of the Sulu Sultanate, Malaysia has never made any payment to the Philippine government,” Hussein said.

He also reiterated that Malaysia did not recognize and entertain any claim by any party over Sabah. The state, he said, had been recognized as part of Malaysia by the UN as well as the international community.

He also claimed that Malaysia and the Philippines have an understanding that the claim over Sabah will not be raised at any regional or international platform.

“Until now, the claim on Sabah has only been raised by those who claim to be descendants of the Sulu Sultanate,” he said.

“It will be up to President Duterte to do so. It was his campaign promise,” Rasul said.

Hussein said the payments were made based on a treaty signed on 22 January 1878 between the then Sultan of Sulu Jamalul Alam and Baron de Overbeck and Alfred Dent of the British North Borneo Company.

The Philippine government, however, had officially taken up the Sabah issue at least twice during Mr. Duterte’s term after Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. chastised both the Malaysian and US governments for misdeclaring the island or its people as part of Malaysia.

After Locsin chastised Malaysian Ambassador Norman Muhamad for calling returning Filipinos from North Borneo as “expatriates.”

“When this COVID-19 was starting and Zamboanga was getting quite a lot of infections from Filipinos leaving Sabah to return to Zamboanga, I told the ambassador, ‘Don’t you dare call them repatriates,’” Locsin said. “‘You just say you’re moving Filipinos from one place to the other. Don’t you dare call them that’ and he has not.”

Then Locsin lambasted the US Embassy in Manila for calling Sabah as part of Malaysia.

“Sabah is not in Malaysia if you want to have anything to do with the Philippines,” an irate Locsin tweeted.

Sultan Muedzul Lail Tan Kiram, chief of the Royal House of Sulu, also issued a call for unity among the nine families staking their claim on Sabah to bolster the Philippine position.

In 2013 an army of 200 Tausug went to Sabah to assert the Philippine claim. The misadventure resulted in the death of some 60 Tausug warriors.

Former President Benigno Simeon Aquino III took the Malaysian position and demanded the Filipinos’ return to Sulu.

That group was sent to Sabah by Jamalul Kiram III, one of the claimants to the throne of the Sultanate of Sulu. Jamalul died barely eight months after sending his warriors to Sabah in February that year.