Re-open probe on 1976 air crash that killed Sabah CM: Yong
By Queville To, Free Malaysia Today
Sabah Progressive Party president Yong Teck Lee is urging the authorities to reopen investigations into the June 6, 1976 air crash which killed chief minister Fuad Stephens and the core of his cabinet so that all doubts about the true causes of the crash are removed.
He said that there are still lingering doubts that the crash could be linked to the federal government’s alleged role in imposing a regime change in Sabah in order to control the state’s oil.
He added that the new revelation by senior Umno leader Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah here last Friday that the Usno-led state government under the late Mustapha Harun had refused to sign the petroleum agreement in 1975 has revived the issue of Malaysian federalism and the crackdown which followed on uncooperative state governments.
“Prior to Tengku Razaleigh’s revelation, the people in Sabah had relied on word of mouth and other indirect sources (for the truth about the puzzling handover of Sabah’s oil wealth to the federal government in 1976),” said Yong, which included a 1976 book ‘The Politics of Federalism, Syed Kechik in East Malaysia’ that revealed the intrusion of the federal government into state politics.
The late Syed Kechik had described Tengku Razaleigh in the book as the point-man in engineering and funding the defeat of the Usno alliance by Parti Berjaya in 1976.
Syed Kechik said that Mustapha “felt that future generations of Sabahans might later criticise his surrender of the state’s wealth to the federal government, and he wanted the clause ‘in perpetuity’ be removed from the petroleum agreement”.
“Now that this fact has been corroborated by a surviving, credible leader (Tengku Razaleigh), Sabahans will gain a better understanding of the political and economic relationship between Sabah and the federal government,” said Yong.
He added that although the then alliance government consisting of Usno, ex-Upko leaders and the Sabah Chinese Association (SCA) had been autocratic and had its weaknesses and wrongs for several years, it was only when the alliance state government refused to sign the petroleum agreement with Petronas that the federal government acted to change the state government.
“As we know, the majority of Sabahans supported Parti Berjaya at the time but for reasons other than surrendering our oil to KL,” he added.
