Need to review M'sia Agreement, says MP
Published on: Monday, October 06, 2014
KOTA KINABALU: Parliament must consider accepting a motion to review the Malaysia Agreement 1963 since the topic on Sabah's and Sarawak's status in the federation has become a hotly debated issue lately.Speaking at the Forum and Dialogue – Sabah In or Out of Malaysia on Saturday, Penampang MP Darrel Leiking urged Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government Minister Datuk Rahman Dahlan, who was also a panel speaker at the forum, to bring the matter to Parliament.Leiking said the review is necessary to determine whether past leaders who agreed to Malaysia's formation had thought Sabah would become a mere state in the federation.ADVERTISEMENT "It is not to take Sabah and Sarawak out of Malaysia, but to put things right again, and it is the right time to review the agreement after the scheduled review which was set in 1973 was abandoned."Last year, I took the opportunity to table a motion to review the agreement and to the Speaker, Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia's credit, he allowed it to be read but it was later dismissed because it was deemed not urgent."But the situation has changed now. There is a great urgency to do this right now and I hope we would be able to table the motion again in the next Parliament sitting," he said.Leiking continued that during his research, he found that when the idea was first proposed to Sabahan leaders in 1962, the leaders at the time fully supported the formation of Malaysia and the Cobbold Report stated that Sabah should not be colonised by Malaya.ADVERTISEMENT "The intention and the spirit at the time was that Sabah will be an equal partner in the federation.
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Unfortunately, at the time, perhaps due to being political novices or maybe we were not too intelligent in defining what we wanted, left the wordings to the British and to lawyers, Tunku Abdul Rahman and Lee Kuan Yew," he said.In 1976, he added, the constitution was amended and the Bornean states were included in the list of thirteen states in the federation which effectively demoted Sabah and Sarawak's status to mere states.Referring to his conversation with political activist Zainnal Ajamain, Leiking said Zainnal specifically mentioned about Article 160 of the Constitution that defined the federation as the Federation of Malaya 1957."Where did that come from? The Malaysia Agreement 1963 should be the basis of the Malaysia formation. Treaties prior to 1963 should be rendered void today, including those in the constitution, which was drawn in 1957."That is why we need to review that what we set out in 1963, whether or not those have been fulfilled, whether Malaysia today is what we have aspired it to be in 1963?"If we read the current constitution, the Malaysia we have now is questionable because even the definition itself is questionable," he said.In terms of oil royalty which was also an issue discussed during the forum, Leiking said in the Petroleum Agreement 1976, there was no provision that says the Federal Government would get five per cent cash payment as well.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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In fact, he said, Sabah should be getting 10 per cent and the Federal Government should not take a cent of the cash payment."The five per cent to Kuala Lumpur is illegal and the Sabah Government should demand that the five per cent be returned to the State," he said.