Dompok adamant, wants to surrender IC

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-s On Mar 31, 2013

(FMT) – Nazri Aziz’s rejection of calls to revoke and re-issue ICs to genuine Sabahans has again raised suspicions over the current RCI hearing and the government’s sincerity.

If not for the invasion of a small village on the east coast of Sabah a few weeks ago by a group of armed Filipinos calling themselves the Royal Army of Sulu, the fate of over a million new immigrants – legal and illegal – would have been settled.

They would have all been so thoroughly embedded in Sabah’s social fabric that any change to their status would have caused economic and political upheaval in the state that would never be permitted.

Even an ongoing inquiry into how hundreds of thousands of them had acquired citizenship during the Barisan Nasional coalition government’s rule of the state and how the state’s population had exploded as a result, would have had little scope to remedy the lack of harmony.

But all that has changed in the past few weeks.

It has put two federal cabinet ministers at odds.

The trio of Kadazandusun and Murut-based coalition members, Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS), the United Pasokmomogun Kadazandusun Murut Organisation (Upko) and Parti Bersatu Rakyat Sabah (PBRS), have united to demand that all citizenship papers granted to those in the state be revoked and reissued to only those qualified to be citizens.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz has rejected the demand on the grounds that it would be difficult for the federal government to issue new MyKad for those in Sabah, as demanded by the three KadazanDusunMurut-based BN parties.

“It is just a suggestion by the parties, but I feel it is difficult to be implemented … there are legal implications,” he said a week ago.

His comments have again raised suspicions about the direction of the current Royal Commission of Inquiry into the issue and the federal government’s intentions.

But his cabinet colleague, Bernard Dompok, the leader of Upko, is sticking to his guns, knowing that it is an issue that has widespread support among ordinary citizens in the state and perhaps the country.

Repeating his call yesterday for the recall and review of all Malaysian identity cards that were issued in Sabah, the Penampang MP said he would take the lead to surrender his identity card or MyKad to the relevant authority.