Kota Kinabalu: Sarawak United Peoples’ Party (SUPP) Senator Robert Lau Hui Yew accused Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad of hypocrisy for demanding parliamentary approval for oil deals now, when he bypassed it in the 1970s to take Sarawak’s resources.
Robert’s rebuke came in reaction to Dr Mahathir’s recent claim that Sarawak’s resource agreements must go through Parliament, which is lopsided now with Singapore’s MP seats grabbed by Malaya upon the republic’s expulsion in 1965, instead of going to the Borneo territories.
“It is interesting that he has now chosen to take a principled stand on this issue—one that he did not seem to apply in the past.
“My question is did this principle apply when then Chief Minister of Sarawak, Yakub Abdul Rahman, was pressured into signing a one-page letter in June 1976, effectively surrendering Sarawak’s oil and gas rights to Petronas?
“This letter was never tabled in Parliament, nor was it presented to the Sarawak State Assembly or even approved by the Sarawak State Cabinet.
“Does Dr Mahathir now agree that this letter lacks legitimacy since it was never endorsed by Parliament, the Sarawak Government, or its legislative assembly?” he asked.
“This was not just backroom dealing—it was coercion,” Robert said, likening the deal to “an adult pressuring a child to sign away his inheritance.”
Robert also disputed Dr Mahathir’s claim that British rule left Sarawak impoverished, noting the state was a colony for only 17 years (1946–1963) — too brief for significant resource extraction.
“Sarawak only became a British colony in 1946, when Charles Vyner Brooke, the third White Rajah, ceded it to Britain. Sarawak remained a colony for less than 17 years, until 16 September 1963, when the British handed it over to the newly formed Federation of Malaysia,” he said.
“In that short time, Britain had neither the opportunity nor the capacity to extract significant wealth from Sarawak. Its oil and gas resources were not yet meaningfully developed.
“The hundreds of billions taken—and still being taken—out of Sarawak have not benefited the British. They have overwhelmingly benefited Malaya.
“A large portion of this expropriation happened during Dr Mahathir’s tenure as Prime Minister from 1981 to 2003, when he wielded control over Petronas.
“Did Dr Mahathir seek the consent of Parliament for this extraction? The answer is clearly no. Petronas’s accounts are not open to public scrutiny, and its operations lack transparency.
“By 2014, the cumulative value of petroleum extracted from Sarawak by Petronas and the Federal Government had reached RM1 trillion,” he said.
He said when Malaysia was formed, Sarawak and Sabah were promised accelerated development. Instead, their resources were siphoned off for the development of others, often at their own expense.
“Did the British build a “Twin Tower” in London with the profits from Malaya’s rubber and tin?
“No. But Malaysia (at the instruction of Dr Mahathir) did with oil and gas profits from Sarawak and Sabah. The Petronas Twin Towers stand tall in Kuala Lumpur, built with wealth drawn largely from these two states.”
