What equal status for Sabah, Sarawak is all about
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WHAT will equal status mean for Sabah and Sarawak?
That’s the question when Putrajaya tables a motion to restore the equal status of Sabah and Sarawak by amending Article 1(2) of the constitution in the ongoing Parliament sitting.
This is one of Pakatan Harapan’s election promises.
The two states had their equal status granted during the formation of Malaysia in 1963 but it was downgraded to that of being just states of the federation in 1976 by the Dewan Rakyat.
So what is this equal status all about? And why it is important to Sabah and Sarawak?
Before that, a little understanding on the history of Malaysia and its formation is required.
Article 1(2) of the constitution, prior to its amendment in 1976, states:
The states of the federation shall be:
(a) The states of Malaya, namely Johor, Kedah, Kelantan, Malacca, Negri Sembilan, Pahang, Penang. Perak, Perlis, Selangor and Terengganu (the federated Malay states) and:
(b) The Borneo states, namely, Sabah and Sarawak; and,
(c) The state of Singapore.
After the 1976 amendment, the wordings read: “the states of the federation shall be Johor, Kedah, Kelantan, Malacca, Negri Sembilan, Pahang, Penang, Perak, Perlis, Sabah, Sarawak, Selangor and Terengganu.”
Singapore withdrew from the federation in 1965.
The wordings of the constitution prior to the amendment clearly showed there were four distinct territories/states that made up the new federation, which is the status Sabah and Sarawak have been demanding in recent years.
Why are Sabah and Sarawak demanding a return to the status prior to 1976?
The 1976 constitutional amendment downgraded Sabah and Sarawak’s status as equal partners in forming the federation to mere states similar to the 11 federated Malay states in the peninsula.
Unlike the 11 Malay states, Sabah and Sarawak only agreed to form Malaysia after their long lists of rights, all spelt out in the Malaysia Agreement 1963, were agreed upon and their positions as independent territories were protected.
The list of rights included having no official religion, retaining the status of the English language, the right to stop undesirable people from the federated Malay states under immigration autonomy, to have the absolute rights to all the natural resources in their respective states, revenue and even to altering their boundary.
The downgrade as the 12th and 13th states of Malaysia allowed the federal government to erode some of these rights agreed in the MA63.
What are the rights eroded?
Agreeing to help form Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak only gave up three things – defence, internal security and foreign affairs.
Everything else are matters within the rights of the two Borneo states. Over the years, little by little, they were taken over by Kuala Lumpur, like rights on education and health and medical services.
The biggest source of anger is the federal government’s plundering of the oil and gas resources of the two states.
State rights activist Lina Soo had warned that to change the word “state” into any other word, such as “wilayah” or “territory”, would be questionable as Borneo states as used in MA63 mean a nation-state and country as in general usage of the word in English.
Are people in Sarawak and Sabah happy with Putrajaya’s proposed amendment to Article 1(2)?
Most are generally supportive as they see it as a first step in the right direction.
While many are delighted, some politicians and rights activists in the two states remain cautious and are wary about a possible “Putrajaya trap”.
Sarawak Deputy Chief Minister James Masing, for example, is demanding one-third of parliamentary seats to be reallocated to Sabah and Sarawak as part of the agreement to deny the peninsula the two-thirds it needs to push through any further amendment to the constitution.
Soo, who is also president of Star, is urging the federal government to declare all federal legislation that had altered the MA63 as null and void.
Like most Sarawakians, Soo also wants all federal laws which compromise the rights of Sarawak under MA63 to be expunged from the constitution or added with a proviso to state that those federal laws shall not apply to Sarawak.
Two laws that come to mind are the Petroleum Development Act (PDA), which gives the national petroleum company Petronas absolute rights over Sabah and Sarawak’s oil and gas resources, and the Territorial Sea Act (TSA), which altered their political boundaries by limiting their sovereign rights and jurisdictions over their surrounding seas, from 22km from the coastline to just 5.5km.
The PDA and TSA have long been seen by the people in the Borneo states as Putrajaya acting as “landowners”, violating the states’ rights and holding all of their economic resources including oil and gas.
What else do Sabahans and Sarawakians want back?
The short answer is revenue.
The federal government had collected and had not returned to the states the revenues as per MA63. Some of the collection go as far back as 1973.
Sabah is demanding payment of revenue collected in the state under the so-called the 60:40 revenue sharing plan.
The federal government had stopped making the payments to Sabah since 1973.
Why is the issue a political football?
Fighting for state rights wins votes as DAP found out in the 2016 state elections.
While Sarawak’s ruling Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) wants to be seen as the champion for fighting the returns of the rights and autonomy, the state opposition – PH – is trying to show who gave away those rights.
“If we tell them returning the status is all important to us in Sabah and Sarawak, then they will probably ask: ‘Why did you guys agree to the amendment in 1976 to take away the status and not even making a squeak over the past 42 years before 509 (the May 9 general election last year)?’
“Maybe this small question should be answered by BN-GPS.
“For us in PH, it is no issue. We know it is important to the people of Sabah and Sarawak, so we want it amended it back to pre-1976 now that we are in power.” – March 18, 2019.