USM don got it all wrong: Activist
Published on: Thursday, May 26, 2016
Kota Kinabalu: Putting the blame on Sabah and Sarawak for disrupting national harmony is wrong because it is Malaya that reneged on the rights, protections and safeguards given in the Inter-Governmental Committee Report (IGC Report), the Malaysia Agreement 1963 and the Malaysian Constitution."It is not Sabah and Sarawak that are breaking up Malaysia. To put any blame on Sabah and Sarawak is totally and utterly wrong. If there was no Federation of Malaya in 1963, Sabah and Sarawak today could be as developed and prosperous as Singapore and Brunei," said political activist Zainnal Ajamain.Zainnal was commenting on the statement made by Faculty of Syariah and Law, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia Senior Lecturer Mohd Hazmi Mohd Rusli (PhD) in the Daily Express Forum on May 22. Hazmi, among others, accused Sabah and Sarawak of hurting nation-building for their continuous claim of having achieved independence outside the formation of the Federation of Malaysia.
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Hazmi stated that Sabahans and Sarawakians should remember that without the Federation of Malaysia, the two states would not be able to achieve independence, at least not in 1963. He also said that labelling oneself as either Malayan, Sarawakian or Sabahan is immaterial."Sabahans and Sarawakians are well-versed about the formation of Malaysia more than any Malayans who call themselves Malaysians. I use the word Malaya here because there is no such word as Semenanjung in the Malaysia Constitution. "Therefore, why should people from Sabah and Sarawak call people from Malaya as people from Semenanjung – that is unconstitutional," he said.To resolve these semantics, he said Malaya could simply amend the Malaysia constitution so that any reference to the Federation of Malaya or Malaya also means reference to Semenanjung.
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He added, however, just changing the Malaysia Constitution is only part of the story as they also need to change the Malaysia Act 1963 Chapter 35 (passed by British parliament on July 31, 1963), IGC Report and the Malaysia Agreement 1963. "The Malayan could change the Malaysia Constitution with impunity but there is no way that they can change the Malaysia Act 1963 Chapter 35, the IGC Report and the Malaysia Agreement 1963.
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"All they can do is to acknowledge that all these documents are irrelevant – then Sabah and Sarawak will rise and say in unison that Malaysia is irrelevant," he said.Zainnal said this is one of the major points missed by Hazmi and it made whatever he said sounded condescending, patronising, lofty, conceited and ignorant.In the last five decades, he said not one historian from Malaya really wrote about the formation of Malaysia because all they cared about was to write about the Federation of Malaya."Even this historical narrative was hijacked by the leaders and elites in Malaya. They did not interpret the historical narrative of the Federation of Malaya as it was, they were writing about the historical narrative of a political conclave," he said.Zainnal explained that as far as the formation of Malaysia is concerned, the process started well before the Second World War.In the beginning the British planned to have Malaya and Singapore merging as one Federation while Brunei, Sabah and Sarawak merging to become the Borneo Federation. Following this only, that Malaysia would be born from the final merger of the Borneo Federation and the Federation of Malaya (including Singapore). "It clearly showed from historical records that Sabah and Sarawak had no intention to establish Malaysia. It was just that Malaya did not want to merge with Singapore without the Borneo states thrown in as one package," he said.Nevertheless, the British knew that the Borneo states were not ready to merge with the Federation of Malaya and they knew about Malaya's intention to "take over" the Borneo states the minute the British left."The British, therefore, worked out a scheme whereby the merging of the Borneo states and the Federation of Malaya was 'temporary' and to make it legally air-tight they created the 'conditions' for merger, namely the rights, protections and safeguards that were written down and agreed by all parties concerned."Both the IGC Report and the Malaysia Agreement 1963 were signed by the United Kingdom, the Federation of Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak. Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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