I am perplexed that you are perplexed, Datuk Henrynus

If you think we are so untrustworthy that you cannot feel safe with us unless you have 35 percent of the parliament seats for yourselves, how can you expect us to trust that you will not use that 35 percent that you have against us once you have it?

Nehru Sathiamoorthy

On Oct 4, Parti Kerjasama Anak Negeri (ANAK NEGERI) President, Datuk Henrynus Amin came out with a statement to say that he was perplexed by some of the things that I wrote in the article “Why Sabah and Sarawak are unlikely to get 35% of Dewan Rakyat’s seats” which was published in Malaysia-Today and  FOCUS Malaysia on 1st October 2024.

According to him, he is particularly baffled by the suggestion that “there is not a single soul in Peninsular Malaysia who wants Putrajaya to give Sabah and Sarawak 35% of the seats in the Dewan Rakyat.”

I, on my part, am baffled by why he is baffled.

When I said that “there is not a single soul in Peninsular Malaysia that wants Putrajaya to give Sabah and Sarawak 35% of the seats in the Dewan Rakyat,” I had presumed that I was merely making a simple and self-evident statement. The statement that I had made in that proposition, is at least to me, as simple as the proposition that there is not a single soul in PAS that wants Malaysia to be a secular state or there is not a single soul in DAP that wants Malaysia to be an Islamic state or there is not a single soul in PKR that wants Muhyiddin to the PM of Malaysia or there is not a single Manchester United fan that wants Liverpool to top the premier league this year. Like saying water is wet and fire is hot, I had presumed that the statement I had made would have been easily understood as a self-evident fact, without anyone needing any further explanation.

But this, it seems, is not the case. So for the benefit of those who are perplexed by what I have said, let me elucidate the statement further.

Semenanjung currently has 75 percent of the parliament seats. The Bornean states have 25 percent. The Bornean states are asking Semenanjung to give them 10 percent of their seats, or in other words, reduce Semenanjung’s percentage of seats to 65 percent and increase the Bornean states seat to 35 percent, because “they don’t feel safe” unless they have 35 percent of the seats. According to Sabah and Sarawak’s line of thinking, they need 35 percent of the seats in the Dewan Rakyat to be allocated to them, because then and only then will they be assured that  Putrajaya will not attempt to nullify any of the the provisions of the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63).

Imagine that. Not only are the Bornean states asking Semenanjung to reduce its power for the sake of increasing their power, they are also saying that the reason they are asking for Semenanjung to reduce its power and increase their power is because they are afraid that Semenajung might infringe upon their rights. I put it to Henrynus that it is actually the Bornean states’ requests that is the one that is perplexing, because it seems to me that they are confused about the state of their relationship with Semenanjung. On one hand, they don’t seem to trust us very much, because they feel that that they need to safeguard themselves from us, but on the other hand, they are also asking us to reduce our power to increase theirs, as if they think that we are such a highly fair, noble and selfless people, that we will accept a loss on our side just to alleviate their fears.

If you think we are untrustworthy, why expect us to be noble, fair and selfless, and if you think we are noble, fair and selfless, why assume that we will act in an untrustworthy manner?

Furthermore, if you think we are so untrustworthy that you cannot feel safe with us unless you have 35 percent of the parliament seats for yourselves, how can you expect us to trust that you will not use that 35 percent that you have against us once you have it? Once you have 35 percent of the seats, you will just be 15 percent short of ruling the federation. Borneans account for a mere fifth of the Federation’s population, but with a 35 percent seat representation, you will be within a hairsbreadth away from ruling the federation. Are we supposed to trust that you will only use the 35 percent to safeguard your interest, and not try to expand your powers? Don’t you think it is odd that you express mistrust of us, while expecting us to trust you at the same time?

Sabah and Sarawak only have 17 percent of the Federation’s population. As it is, they already have 25 percent of the parliament seats, which is very high considering their percentage of population, and they are already able to use their advantage to act as Kingmakers in the federation. If they have 35 percent, just 17 percent of East Malaysians will determine 35 percent of the seats in the parliament while 83 percent of us in Semenanjung will merely determine 65 percent of the seats. What this means is that one vote by a Sabahan or a Sarawakian will be equal to almost 3 votes by a person from Semenanjung. Does that sound fair to anyone?

To baffle me further, Henrynus then said that he doesn’t understand why I had said that no political party in Peninsula Malaysia will support Sabah and Sarawak in their bid to secure 35% of the Malaysian parliamentary seats, before explaining that he actually does in fact understand it.

“If the claim is true, then it follows that no one or no political party in Peninsula Malaysia will allow Sabah and Sarawak to have the power to influence the Dewan Rakyat, to choose the Prime Minister (PM), or to amend the Federal Constitution,” Henrynus  said, to indicate that he actually understood what he claimed that he didn’t understand.

Yes. No one and no political party in Peninsular Malaysia wants Sabah and Sarawak to have the power to influence the Dewan Rakyat, choose the PM or amend the federal constitution. We don’t want Sabah and Sarawak to have such powers, because these are powers that we ourselves want, yet don’t have and have been fighting for decades to possess. Unless like Rip Van Winkle, Henrynus has been asleep for the last decade or two, he should realise that everybody and every political party in Semenanjung have been embroiled in a bitter and relentless struggle to influence the Dewan Rakyat, choose the PM and amend the federal constitution for at least a decade now. The non-Malays in Semenanjung have been trying for decades to possess  these powers, and yet we still don’t have it. The Malays too want these powers so badly they have resorted to fighting amongst themselves to possess it, even if their infighting has resulted in them being fractured into half a dozen factions. The struggle to have these powers has also resulted in a number of top politicians in Semenanjung ending up in jail or face jail time as well as up the race and religious rhetoric in the peninsular to such an extent, that it is threatening to fray the racial relationship in the peninsular.

When every political party and every race in Semenanjung has fought so hard and relentlessly for more percentage of seats in the Dewan Rakyat, what in the world is possessing Henrynus to believe that we are just going to hand it to the East Malaysians on a silver platter?

Anwar Ibrahim went to jail twice and suffered untold humiliation for a quarter of a century to become the PM of the whole of Malaysia, not half of Malaysia.

East Malaysia also has no legal grounds to ask for the 35 percent.

As Henrynus himself has admitted, the 35% share of parliamentary seats for Sabah and Sarawak  is just something that he believes was tacitly agreed upon under the Malaysia Agreement of  1963. The key word here is “tacitly”, meaning there is nothing in the constitution that expressly says that Sabah and Sarawak should have 35 percent of the parliamentary seats. The term 35 percent doesn’t exist anywhere in the constitution. The fact that since 1965 – which is the year that Singapore separated from Malaysia –  until today, there has been no serious attempt by any East Malaysian leader to beget Singapore’s 10 percent of the parliament seats for Sabah and Sarawak also casts doubt as to whether there is even a tacit agreement in the first place. If there was, how come no East Malaysian leaders have pursued this “tacit agreement” for over 60 years?

Although Henrynus has wounded my feelings by saying “While the article must be read with a pinch of salt or deep scepticism and no one should speculate as to the real motive of the writer, in order to clear all doubts, political parties or leaders from Peninsula Malaysia involved directly in local Sabah and Sarawak politics, such as PKR UMNO, PPBM DAP, MCA, or even MIC, must openly, clearly, and immediately issue official statements to clarify their position on the matter.” I appreciate the fact that rather than throw tantrum or threats, he has decided to take proactive measures to investigate and resolve the matter.

Whatever he thinks of me, I think that Henrynus’s move to ask peninsular parties like PKR, UMNO, PPBM, DAP, MCA, or even MIC to issue official statements to clarify their position on the matter is indeed the perfect and conclusive way to settle the matter.

I also would like to see if a peninsular party like MIC and MCA, which each only has a paltry 1 and 2 seats in the Dewan Rakyat respectively, are going to declare that they are fully in support of East Malaysia getting more seats, when they have no presence in East Malaysia, are themselves are low on seats and will likely have a difficult time explaining to their supporters, why they want East Malaysian parties to have more power in the Dewan Rakyat, and reduce their own already pathetic level of presence in the Dewan Rakyat, to an even more pathetic level.

If peninsular parties do in fact endorse the East Malaysian parties’ desire, despite having nothing to gain and everything to lose by endorsing the East Malaysian parties’ desire, I will have to take my hats off to the peninsular parties. The level of selflessness and nobility of spirit that they exude is a sign that politics is not a suitable field for them – they should all leave it to enter the hallowed fields of philosophy and spirituality, to become the philosophers and saints that their selfless and noble action reveals them to be.