A token of Sarawak independence
By uppercaise
When Tony Pua, MP for PJ Utara, re-Tweeted Fahmi Fadzil’s comment about a Sarawak government slogan a few days ago, they were both absent-mindedly, and probably unconsciously, revealing typical Umno-Malayan condescension for the heartfelt — but now little-expressed and almost buried — conviction in northern Borneo that the formation of Malaysia meant independence and self-government.
@tonypuaTony Pua
Tuesday 8 Mar 2011 UTC 00:02:20 00:02 via ÜberSocialRetweetReply
Look back to the years following Malaysia Day in 1963, when national newspapers and local newspapers in the two provinces would produce supplements on Sept 16 in which the provincial governments declared their celebration of “Independence Within Malaysia”.
These were official reminders to the neo-colonial authorities in Kuala Lumpur that the two provinces were not merely adjuncts to the 11 other piddling little states in Malaya who had federated in 1957.
No, sir, we achieved our independence within Malaysia, they proclaimed.
But these two provinces, together making up 60% of the land area of the federation, no longer do so — a result of years of grinding down by the neo-colonial Malayan hegemony.
That Malaysia Day was only half-heartedly given recognition by the neo-colonial authority in 2009 came only after it belatedly awakened to the potential loss of federal power from disgruntled Borneo MPs preparing to switch sides to an alternative coalition that seemed prepared (at the time) at least to make more than token sound bites.
Independence day in Sarawak, 1963But post-Malaysia Malayans have forgotten that there existed such a sentiment in the Borneo provinces.
They have forgotten, too, that there existed a Sarawak Office and a Sabah Office in the federal establishment — along the lines of the UK’s colonial Scottish Office and Welsh Office — and that the Federal Secretary was the liaison between the centre and the provinces, not the pro-consul as he has now become.
All that was washed away in the name of a so-called “national integration” heralded by Mahathir Mohamad and Musa Hitam (the so-called 2M Administration) with the switch in time zones to a national time zone based on East Malaysian Standard Time.
A sop. A token.
Integration? It was more an unsubtle conquest through electoral and political chicanery — even from the early days of federation itself, as when Stephen Kalong Ningkan was sacked as chief minister by the father of federation himself, Tengku Abdul Rahman Putra.
Read more at: https://uppercaise.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/a-token-of-sarawak-independence/
