Daily Express Subscriber
Sign in to your account.

IT is easy to criticise our political leaders, especially when the law on defamation seems to favour the critics on a defence of fair comment. Politicians all over the world, especially countries with democratic institutions and conventions, are the targets of criticisms - some correctly but many are mostly unfair criticisms.

Our own political leaders are also fair game to people who like to find fault with the administration of the day or the past performance of our leaders.

Last week a writer to the Sunday Forum of the Daily Express leveled his criticism against the President of the PBS who is also the President of the KDCA, Tan Sri Joseph Pairin Kitingan.

He said Pairin did not do anything for the Kadazandusun community despite the fact that he was at one time a Chief Minister of the State.

He mentioned in particular, his failure to upgrade or promote KDMs in the civil service and claimed that many of these people are now left behind, languishing at the bottom rung of the civil service, without any hope of promotion! This sort of criticism is not just directed towards Pairin.

It is also directed towards the present government.

for indirectly he is saying that the present administration practices discrimination against a section of the community.

He did not give any example of who had been discriminated against in the civil service.

The thrust of his criticism, however, is on Pairin, which to me is quite unfair to the Kadazandusun leader.

As one who knows the background of how PBS was formed and also how he got to be made the second modern day Huguan Siou, I feel that it is quite unfair for us to haul our criticism against him especially when he was at first reluctant to accept the challenges of leadership for the KDM communities.

Instead we should encourage him to continue to shoulder the burden of leading the community.

I was amongst the many Kadazandusun "old guards" who went to see Pairin and encourage him to take the mantle of Kadazan leadership left vacant by the untimely death of Tun Fuad Stephens, the first modern day Huguan Siou. And again, I was amongst the many others who encouraged him to form PBS and be counted at the next general election.

We accompanied him many times to go to Kuala Lumpur to get approval for the registration of PBS and at the same time to find "friends" from amongst the Malays, Chinese and Indian leadership - past and present - to speak for him from the "power that be" and grant the new party the license.

To begin with then, Pairin started to set up a political party (PBS) because of popular demand for him to lead and form. Knowing the background of how the PBS was started I would say that it was an accident of history.

It all started at the monthly meeting of the Berjaya party to discuss performances by respective Berjaya leaders. Pairin said to me that after the misunderstanding with the Chief Minister (Tan Sri Harris Salleh) he got up to go over to where the Chief Minister was seated with the intention to explain to him why he was seated together with his district committee.

However, his followers from Tambunan mistook his move and followed him making it appear that they were all leaving the hall!

From this incident, the PBS was formed and in the ensuing election of 1985, the PBS won by a bare majority.

The first thing that the PBS administration did was to restore the names of all communities in the State.

The various communities then were grouped together under one name, namely Pribumi.

This move of calling all the Bumiputra communities of Sabah as Pribumi was not a popular one.

Apart from the perception that there was a hidden agenda for doing away with the original names of the Bumiputra of Sabah such as Kadazan, Bajau, Murut etc., there was also the belief that the term Pribumi was actually coined by Kuala Lumpur leaders to distinguish the Bumiputra of Sabah and the Bumiputra of the peninsular. That is to say that the Malays of the peninsular are the Bumiputra and the natives of Sabah (Bumiputra) are to be called Pribumi. This was also not a popular move and was rejected by Sabah Bumiputra. This was Pairin's first move as a Chief Minister - to remove the name Pribumi, and restore original names of all races in the Census population records.

The record of his administration must also show that he has done a great deal for Sabah and for the people of Sabah including the Kadazandusun Murut communities. For the latter, it was Pairin's who advocated with the concurrence of his fellow KDM leaders in the KCA to merge the Dusun faction and the Kadazan faction into one.

The objective was very clear and that was to find a greater unity among the two factions of Kadazan and Dusun in Sabah. Pairin would be the first one to admit that his administration has committed some errors in matters of political policies but on a whole, he has managed to unite the KDM for the period of nearly 10 years when he was Chief Minister.

The people of Sabah voted the PBS in 1985 and again in 1986 not because the previous the Berjaya administration had failed them in so far as economic and social development are concerned.

Indeed history will record that under the Berjaya administration with Harris as the Chief Minister, the social and economic development of the state grew tremendously.

His administration also promoted a sense of pride of being a Sabahan Malaysian for there was also a marked increase in the number of people who were better of economically and socially.

The people, however, wanted a change and all three communities with the two major Bumiputera communities, namely the Muslim and the Kadazandusun Murut advocating strong changes in a new administration of Sabah and they were also aided by the Chinese community.

The result then was that the PBS got into power.

However, the mistake made by the PBS leaders was their insistence to govern the state on their own and did not accept a coalition with the Muslim party - Usno.

I don't think it is fair for us to criticise a single leader for a perceived failure on his part to deliver for the benefit of the State and the people.

I have always maintained that each and every successive State government, starting from the Sabah Alliance and Usno administration right up to the present BN Umno administration, that tremendous contributions in term of development have been made in Sabah and to the people.

The Usno administration under Tun Mustapha was heavily criticised in the latter part of its governance but the criticism came mainly from erstwhile fellow colleagues in the party who were encouraged by Kuala Lumpur leaders to do so.

Kuala Lumpur leaders did not find it amusing when the Usno administration under Tun Mustapha did not want to sign the Petronas oil agreement giving the State only five percent of oil royalty.

This matter of the five percent Petronas oil agreement signed by the successor government in 1976 is still a matter of great debate by Sabahans today.

The present BN-Umno administration under Datuk Seri Musa Haji Aman, has shown tremendous economic developments for the State too, and its forest policy is also considered as one of the best in the region if not in the world.

There is no reason for us to disturb the present political stability in the State.

It is in our interest to continue to support this administration for our own good and that of our future generation.