IN FOCUS: Push for greater autonomy by Sabah and Sarawak is stronger than ever, but will they finally succeed?
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s administration faces significant hurdles in fully implementing the Malaysia Agreement 1963, including ensuring he does not further alienate Malay support on the peninsula and having to get royal assent, say analysts.
(CNA) – Repeated water cuts in Sabah over the past few years have pushed some university students in the state capital Kota Kinabalu to the brink.
In mid-June, CNA witnessed about 50 Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) students defy the risk of arrest to protest outside Menara Kinabalu – the state administrative building – to voice their frustrations over the multiple disruptions of a basic human right.
Holding loudspeakers and cardboard signs, the students tried to present a memorandum to Chief Minister Hajiji Mohd Noor. “We are only here to ask for our rights,” one of them shouted.
Police ordered the students to disperse but they refused, insisting on a personal meeting with Mr Hajiji.
The 17-hour protest failed to earn this meeting, but the students seemed to get their point across, evident by the news headlines that followed.
While most of the anger at the protest was aimed at the state government, former chief executive officer of Sabah’s Institute for Development Studies Johan Arriffin Samad believes the water problem in UMS and many other places in the state was the result of a bigger issue: Sabah being left behind in infrastructural development compared to peninsular Malaysia.
“How is it that after 60 years in Malaysia, Sabah is suffering from the lack of basic things such as water? And I am not yet talking about schools falling (apart), lack of hospitals, medical services, roads and so on,” the political observer told CNA.
Dr Johan, who authored a book on Sabah and Sarawak’s unequal relationship with West Malaysia, said the two states have been relegated to the sidelines of the nation’s decision-making process, in what he felt was a blatant disregard of the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63).
MA63 refers to the legal instrument signed in 1963 as the basis of the formation of the Federation of Malaysia.
Malaya, Sabah (formerly known as North Borneo), Sarawak and Singapore formed Malaysia in September 1963. Singapore left the federation in August 1965.
“Sabah and Sarawak did not join Malaysia; the two states were equal partners in its formation. Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak gave birth to this nation together; without Sabah and Sarawak, there is no Malaysia,” said Dr Johan.
STRONG PUSH FOR AUTONOMY
The Borneo states’ push for more autonomy as supposedly guaranteed under MA63 now seems to be the strongest in decades ahead of Malaysia Day on Monday (Sep 16), observers said, 61 years to the day the agreement was signed.
MA63 recognises Sabah and Sarawak not as mere states but as equal partners with West Malaysia.
While the East Malaysian states have some degree of autonomy in areas like immigration, what they are really gunning for is more financial and political muscle, which they say was what the agreement originally intended.
