Understand why forebears supported M'sia plan: Rahman
Published on: Sunday, September 21, 2014
Kota Kinabalu: Larissa LumandanSABAHANS must not be too judgmental of their forebears' decision in agreeing to Sabah being part of the nation."Our leaders during the 1950s and 1960s faced lots of challenges. There were a lot of parties wanting us to be part of them in their nation building especially the Philippines, Indonesia, not to mention the influence of communism from Indo-China," said Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government Minister, Datuk Rahman Dahlan.ADVERTISEMENT Besides, he said, the British during that period had decided to put an end to their empire with the denouncement they received from the world.Therefore, the British had to give independence to all their colonised lands, he said."We cannot just close our eyes now and judge history based on the year 2014 point of view especially now that we have gone through a lot of modernisation."Why did our leaders decide to be part of Malaysia? We had a choice to be independent but yet our leaders decided that Sabah should be part of Malaysia.ADVERTISEMENT "The reason was because the Malay Federation had shared the same history with Sabah through British colonisation as well as their similar legal system," said Rahman who is also Sabah BN Secretary.He also responded to the question posed by some people about Sabah being one quarter of the Malaysian Federation. "Tun Fuad Stephens during the declaration had not read out the Malay Federation, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak but instead he read out each state making it one of the 13 states in Malaysia," he said.
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Rahman said this during the Majlis Bicara Tokoh at the Recital Hall in Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), Friday.He advised the people not to be too emotional and go against the spirit of federalism."It is not right to have only Sabahans holding posts in the government sector," he said, adding that if this were to happen then it would be impossible for any Sabahans to hold any important post in other states.Currently, Rahman said there are about 100,000 Sabahans working with the Federal government."Who said that Sabah in the past was rich and currently suffering from poverty?" he asked.In the past, he said the people required at least two to three days to travel from one district to another but it is no longer common now due to infrastructure developments."We can see that there's traffic jam in Kota Belud town and this proves that our people can afford to purchase cars for themselves," he said, adding that the State is always rich, then and now.He said the latest statistics had shown the poverty rates in Sabah since then had gone down 70 to 80 per cent."The poverty rate in Sabah is currently eight per cent. Even though it is still considered high compared to the national average this shows us that we still have lots of things to do."We must not deny the fact the government had done a tremendous job in eradicating poverty in our State. It is not right to say that the government had failed despite the eight per cent rate of poverty in Sabah," he said, explaining it is due to the geographical factors.The State government according to him had increased the poverty line to more than RM1, 000 in order for the people to receive more aids in terms of subsidy from the Federal government as well as the e-kasih programme.Rahman also told the people that if they were to do research, the taxes collected by the government are much lower compared to the expenses spent on the development of the State.Some parties, he said, had claimed that the government had robbed about RM30 to 40 billion from Sabah.He then questioned the origin of the total amount of money, as it was not testified."They kept on talking about Sabah seceding from Malaysia but did they ever speak about the future of Sabah? What about international relations? What about our defence system? What about the position of Sabah in the eyes of the world?"Those people even included the manifesto 'Sabah for Sabah' in their campaigns during the last general election but somehow they lost. What does this mean?," he said, adding that even though these issues are important it should never be turned into bigger ones.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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"It would be a drastic move for Sabah to secede from Malaysia," he said, adding the irony was the government is spending large amounts of money supplying free wireless Internet despite the criticisms they received on the Internet."We are confident the people are with us. We are a confident government," he said.