The Root Causes of Poverty in Sabah & Sarawak, Exposed. (Stories from the East)
The United Borneo Front recently organised an Inter-Party Dialogue & Leadership Seminar in Kota Kinabalu on 5 March 2011. Below is the text of the speech delivered by Daniel John Jambun on behalf of the Common Interest Group Malaysia (CigMa), one of many organisations that attended in support of the Borneo Agenda.
Greetings.
Without much further ado, I will delve immediately into the subject proper of my talk today. Please bear with me. I will keep my address as brief as possible so that we may all ponder on the essential points that I am trying to make.
I have 11 major aspects to put before you today as Food for Thought and you may want to deliberate on them later among yourselves or ask me some questions at the end of my address.
As you all know, the World Bank confirmed late last year that Sabah and Sarawak had achieved the dubious distinction of bring the poorest and second poorest states in Malaysia. This is a figure derived at by using the figures of the Economic Planning Units of the Sabah and Sarawak Governments and the Economic Planning Unit in Putrajaya.
Forty per cent of Malaysia’s poor, according to the World Bank, are in Sabah. This means that almost half of the poor people in Malaysia are in Sabah.
The poverty figures should come as no surprise since both Sabah and Sarawak are actually colonies of Peninsular Malaysia. More on that shortly.
Just contrast the economic development of Sabah and Sarawak with the status of neighbouring Brunei which stayed out from the Malaysian Federation at the last minute in 1963 and Singapore which left after two years in 1965.
By the end of last year, the Singapore economy at US$ 210 billion GDP was bigger than the entire Malaysian economy by US$ 5 billion. This is indeed a shameful state of affairs and one that calls for the leadership in Putrajaya to admit that they are an incompetent and corrupt lot and beyond any redemption in this life or the next. They should head for the nearest toilet bowl to collectively dip their faces. It would no longer do for Putrajaya to continue in a state of denial. Most of the much smaller Malaysian economy vis–vis Singapore is concentrated in Peninsular Malaysia.
Did Sabah and Sarawak agree to federate together with Malaya and Singapore in 1963 to end up at the bottom of the dung heap along with the marginalized and disenfranchised elements of the Third Force in Peninsular Malaysia?
Patently, it’s clear the something went seriously wrong for Sabah and Sarawak in the Malaysian Federation somewhere between 1963 and 2011. Most of the damage to the interests of the two Malaysian Borneo states in fact took place in the early years of independence.
The populations of Sabah and Sarawak may be much smaller than that of Peninsular Malaysia but the fact remains that this is compensated by the larger territorial area of Malaysian Borneo comparatively, its huge economic resources including vast acres of fertile land and consequently much bigger economic potential.
This is not however reflected in the Malaysian Parliament where the number of seats allotted to Malaysian Borneo at presents stands at 57 including the one held by the Federal Territory of Labuan. Peninsular Malaysia meanwhile has 165 seats in Parliament i.e. more than two-thirds – 148 seats – and thereby depriving Sabah and Sarawak of veto power in legislation. It is clear that 18 of the seats held by Peninsular Malaysia in fact belong to Sabah and Sarawak. That would leave Peninsular Malaysia with 147 seats i.e. one short of the two-thirds majority.
The rot set in when Singapore’s exit from Malaysia saw Peninsular Malaysia taking half the 15 seats held by the island in Parliament. This altered the previous balance in Parliament between Peninsular Malaysia on the one hand and, on the other hand, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak in the collective.
Peninsular Malaysian politicians like to make much of the issue that their much larger population must be reflected in the number of seats held in Parliament. If that’s the case, why is that Sabah with a much larger population of 3.2 million than Sarawak’s 2.5 million has to make do with 25 seats in Parliament compared with the latter’s 31 seats. If Sarawak’s much larger territory vis-a-vis Sabah’s and the latter’s much larger population vis-avis the former’s are both taken into consideration, both states should have the same number of seats in Parliament.
In any case, there’s no dispute between Sabah and Sarawak on the allocation of seats in Parliament. It’s immaterial whether Sabah or Sarawak, in comparison with each other, has a much larger number of parliamentary seats. The pertinent point is that Sabah and Sarawak, collectively, must have at least one seat more than one-third in Parliament. The veto power of Sabah and Sarawak in the Malaysian Parliament must be restored.
Peninsular Malaysian politicians routinely also claim that rural seats must be given a certain weightage to compensate for their relative under-development vis-avis urban seats. This is supposed to account for rural seats having a smaller number of voters compared to those in the urban areas.
If that’s the case, why is this formula not being applied in Sabah and Sarawak, which are largely rural, along the lines in Peninsular Malaysia?
The gross under-representation of Sabah and Sarawak in the Malaysian Parliament, and the deprival of their veto power in the process, has a direct co-relation to the grinding poverty levels in Malaysian Parliament.
