Tiang: Position of S'wak, Sabah as equal partners not subject to voting

KUCHING: The po­si­tion of Sarawak and Sabah as equal part­ners in the Fed­er­a­tion of Malaysia ‘is not a mat­ter that is sub­ject to vot­ing in Par­lia­ment’.

          Michael Tiang, a po­lit­i­cal sec­re­tary to the chief min­is­ter and also Youth chief of Sarawak United Peo­ple’s Party (SUPP) said the is­sue should not be sub­ject to re­views in any way by the fed­eral gov­ern­ment.
       “The sta­tus of the two re­gions has been agreed upon, set­tled and sealed by all sig­na­to­ries to the Malaysia Agree­ment 1963 ( MA63),” he told a press yes­ter­day in re­sponse to the say­ing that twothirds ma­jor­ity in Par­lia­ment was needed to re­store Sabah and Sarawak’s po­si­tion.
         Tiang said: “There are cer­tain mat­ters in the Fed­eral Con­sti­tu­tion that Par­lia­ment sim­ply has no ab­so­lute pow­ers to amend by way of two-thirds ma­jor­ity.”

Tiang said: “There are cer­tain mat­ters in the Fed­eral Con­sti­tu­tion that Par­lia­ment sim­ply has no ab­so­lute pow­ers to amend by way of two-thirds ma­jor­ity.”

         He said there was no way that Par­lia­ment could amend the name of Malaysia, its of­fi­cial re­li­gion or the Bu­mi­put­era sta­tus from time-to-time for as long as there was a two-thirds ma­jor­ity.

         He as­serted that these mat­ters, to­gether with the equal part­ner sta­tus of Sabah and Sarawak ‘are the very def­i­ni­tion of the Fed­er­a­tion of Malaysia since 1963’.
     “On such ground, it is there­fore ab­so­lutely ab­surd for the prime min­is­ter or any­one to sug­gest that we should go back to the Par­lia­ment to try to ob­tain twothirds ma­jor­ity sup­port to re­store Sabah and Sarawak’s po­si­tion in Malaysia as equal part­ners.
     “More­over, by sug­gest­ing to put such mat­ter to votes again in the Par­lia­ment will be deemed as an in­sult to the peo­ple of Sabah and Sarawak,” he said.
Tiang said the mis­take be­gan with the in­fa­mous con­sti­tu­tion amend­ment done in 1976.
       Then, the Par­lia­ment suc­cess­fully passed the amend­ment to Ar­ti­cle 1( 2) of the Fed­eral Con­sti­tu­tion by chang­ing the sta­tus of Sabah and Sarawak from one of three ter­ri­to­ries in Malaysia to one of 13 states in the fed­er­a­tion, he said.       .

       Al­though many MPs from Sabah and Sarawak have been ac­cused of sup­port­ing the amend­ment in 1976, Tiang is of the opin­ion that the 1976 amend­ment was, in fact, ul­tra vires as it was done with­out ob­tain­ing any con­sent from the two af­fected re­gions.

       “In fact, Sabah and Sarawak MPs have no power to sell out our po­si­tion as equal part­ners in Malaysia.   All this while, our Sarawak MPs are only rep­re­sent­ing Sarawakians to speak up for their in­ter­ests in the Par­lia­ment.
      “None of them have been given any pow­ers or au­thor­ity to vote in the Par­lia­ment to change the for­ma­tion of Malaysia on be­half of Sarawak.
      “In fact, only our Sarawak Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly ( DUN) has such power and au­thor­ity to give con­sent to a mat­ter so fun­da­men­tal to the for­ma­tion of our na­tion,” he said.

The ‘con­sent’, ac­cord­ing to Tiang, could nei­ther be given by any MP or chief min­is­ter of a state. A con­sent from a state can only be con­sid­ered valid when a law is passed in the DUN to give ef­fect to such con­sent.
    “This hap­pened in 1973 when Se­lan­gor DUN passed a law to give con­sent to the dec­la­ra­tion of Kuala Lumpur as a fed­eral ter­ri­tory.  Sim­i­larly in 1984, Sabah DUN passed a law to give con­sent to Labuan be­ing de­clared as a new fed­eral ter­ri­tory.
    “In the past 55 years, there was never a law passed by Sarawak DUN to give con­sent to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to al­ter the po­si­tion of Sarawak to be­come one of 13 states in Malaysia,” he said.
      As such, Tiang de­manded that the fed­eral gov­ern­ment not to drag this mat­ter any longer by claim­ing that the gov­ern­ment re­quires more time to study the MA63.

He said there should be no fur­ther doubts or de­bates on the po­si­tion of Sabah and Sarawak, which is clearly stated in the MA63, the Procla­ma­tion of Malaysia as well as the 1963 orig­i­nal pro­vi­sion in the Fed­eral Con­sti­tu­tion.
       He thus urged the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to take all steps nec­es­sary to re­store the po­si­tion of Sabah and Sarawak by an­nulling the 1976 amend­ment, amend­ing any laws that in­fringe such po­si­tion like the Ter­ri­to­rial Sea Act 2012 and re­view­ing all his­tory syl­labus in school text­books that teach the wrong thing about the for­ma­tion of Malaysia.

My comments:
The evil-minded devil or his successor and the administration may drag on as they like when we Sarawakians are well-prepared to vote to quit from the federation of Malaysia for good.  We will vote for those who can stand for Sarawak independence.  We Sarawakians decide the best option to secede from the federation as we are given the rights to do so.  Based on 14th December, Decolonisation Declaration, we are given self-determination to decide the fate of Sarawak.  How did Maldives become independent?