Reveal how much Sabah, S'wak lost since '63: MP
Published on: Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Kota Kinabalu: Penampang MP, Darrel Leiking has welcomed but with reservation the recent announcement by Minister of Foreign Affairs, Datuk Seri Anifah Aman on securing the formation of a "select or special committee" on Sabah's 40 per cent entitlements of the net revenue collected by the Federal Government."I do understand that the Minister of Foreign Affairs may have had to do a lot of legwork to get the Prime Minister to agree with the request and thank and congratulate him for his relentless pursuit and effort to bring the Sabah issues to the Federal Government," he said.However, Leiking who is also a vice president of Parti Keadilan Rakyat said he was concerned that the arrogance of the Federal Government still continued whereby it had reduced the people, in Sabah to accept this 'special committee' in lieu of its obvious breach of its Constitutional obligation. The entitlements is pursuant to the Tenth Schedule, Part 4 (2) of the Federal Constitution.
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He said it has been 52 years since the formation of the Federation of Malaysia and "yet we are expected to gleefully 'negotiate and accept' the offer to set up a committee to study whether the Federal Government has complied with their delayed Constitutional obligation to Sabah and of 'the constitutional obligatory payment' of the 40 per cent of the annual net revenue which has obviously been constitutionally breached all these years. "Someone told me that the 'current negotiated offer' is a far better deal then what we had before today, but I replied, we should be in fact be outraged that we had to 'negotiate' with the Federal Government on our Constitutional rights and the thought of thanking them for the offer is really an insult to us all. "I am certain and like majority of Sabahans, I take the opinion that the Federal Government has breached its obligations as agreed in the Malaysia Agreement 1963 and of the Federal Constitution and thereby the Federal Government should make amends by immediately reinstating what has been ignored and unperformed in the Malaysia Agreement 1963 and should also perform its constitutional obligations and not merely encourage to set up 'a committee' to study one aspect of its breached constitutional obligations," he said. It should immediately admit that it ignored and failed in its obligations of the Malaysia Agreement 1963 and had kept Sabah in abeyance all these years and on top it all, the Federal Government should apologise to each and every Sabahan and Sarawakian that it had treated/derogated Sabah (and Sarawak) into a mere 'state' in the Federation of Malaysia, he said.
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"Sabah had agreed to the formation of the Federation of Malaysia with the specific intent to be an equal partner of the Federation and the terms of these were set out in the IGC Report and all documents related to the formation. "In June 2014, I had asked in writing the Minister of Finance and the Federal Government to confirm what were the constitutionally obligated annual amounts equivalent to 2/5 or 40 per cent of the net revenue, which had been paid by the Federal Government to Sabah between the years 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
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"The reply was short of anything but shocking as it would seem only a total of RM160.2 million was paid throughout the period between 2008-2013 thereby translating to a mere RM26.7 million a year only and which the Federal Government wants us to believe represents the 40 per cent of the net revenue constitutionally annually returned to Sabah. "What more when we have been informed that the tax revenue collections yearly from Sabah is more or less by the billions of ringgit," he said.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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