SolGen seeks time on Sabah ruling

So many reference materials have been examined by the team.

It may take time for the government to come up with a position on the 28 February ruling of the French arbitration court to award $14.92 billion to the Sulu Sultanate heirs to be collected from Malaysia over the Sabah claim, Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra said yesterday.

The issue, Guevarra said, is highly complicated and extremely sensitive.

“A task force that conducted a study on details of the French arbitral award has delved into complicated and sensitive issues that consumed much time,” he said when

asked for an update on the matter.

“The Sabah claim is a highly complicated and extremely sensitive political issue. That is why the OSG has devoted much time and careful attention to all relevant historical facts and the impact of the French arbitral award in favor of the heirs of the Sulu sultanate on the claim,” Guevarra said.

He added: “The OSG team will hold its third revalida of the draft report on 28 November before we finalize the same for consideration of other government authorities.”

Bigger backlash probed

Guevarra had formed a task force to investigate the wider implication of the French award. The reports of the body are now being consolidated.

“So many reference materials have been examined by the team,” he said. “We’ve begun collating reference materials for our study, but this task will require a lot of manhours to complete.”

Guevarra added: “If deemed necessary, we’ll consider the possibility of intervention after we have studied the matter well enough, right now, no party involved in the arbitration has approached the government.”

The SolGen office, he said, will take part in the rapidly developing issue on the Sultanate claims which had caught the attention of Malaysian authorities after lawyers of the Sulu royal family seized $2 billion worth of overseas assets of state oil company Petronas on the strength of the international tribunal’s ruling.

The issue stemmed from an agreement between the Sultan of Sulu and a British trading company in 1878 for the exploitation of resources in Sabah in Borneo, which is currently under Malaysian control.

Malaysia took over the regular payment to the heirs of Sabah after its independence from British rule. But in 2013, it decided to stop the payments altogether.

The Malaysian government offered to resume payments of about 5,300 Malaysian ringgit or about P66,000 yearly in 2019, but it was rejected by the heirs, who wanted to renegotiate the deal to be commensurate with the resources Malaysia has been enjoying in Sabah.

Initially, the heirs sought arbitration in Spain, but it was transferred to France.

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