Recently, Gabungan Parti Sarawak’s Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah raised an interesting challenge to former Dewan Rakyat speaker Azhar Harun. Azhar had dismissed the claim that Malaysia owes Sabah and Sarawak 35% of the seats in the lower house.
On Sept 24, Azhar explained that after reviewing the Malaysia Agreement 1963, the Federal Constitution, the Malaysia Act 1963 and the Intergovernmental Committee (IGC) report, he found no provision giving Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore one-third of Dewan Rakyat seats. Nor, he added, was there any clause requiring Singapore’s seats to be transferred to Sabah and Sarawak after its separation.
Karim disagreed. He said Azhar “doesn’t know enough” to make such a claim. “You put 10 lawyers in one room, you will have 10 different opinions,” Karim remarked, before oddly putting his own opinion as a lawyer, although he had just dismissed Azhar's lawyerly opinion as having no consequence on account of being “just another lawyer's opinion. ”
According to Karim, the one-third reservation of seats did exist during Malaysia’s formation — not in the Constitution, but in meeting minutes and conventions.
Now, I am no legal expert. But I find it hard to accept Karim’s argument that what is said in discussions and recorded in minutes should carry the same weight as what is written in official documents and contracts. If that were true, why have lawyers at all? Why not just let secretaries take minutes, and judges interpret these minutes, without bothering to employ an army of lawyers to formalise anything in legal documents and contracts?
Karim also repeated a familiar Borneon argument: that one-third representation, together with safeguards on immigration, resources and autonomy, were the “price” Sabah and Sarawak demanded for joining Malaysia. “Why should we join if we do not get something back?” he asked.
That raises a deeper question: why did Semenanjung, Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore come together in 1963 at all? What exactly were we supposed to “get” by banding together?
Well, I actually have an answer for that, and my answer is that we cannot forget the role that the British, the communist and the nationalist in our neighboring countries like the Philippines and Indonesia, played when all four of us – Semenanjung, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak – bandied together to form a federation in the early 60s.
Unlike Karim, who seem to have a view that all of us – or at least Sarawak – were just doing fine and happy as they were – and only were interested in joining the federation because they were promised a great deal if they chose to join the Federation – I actually think that the federation was formed under the conditions of stress and compulsion, rather than voluntarily and in a state of ease and relaxatin.
Back in the 60s, the British were in a state of decline while the communist were in the rise. Also, newly independent nations that were formed from the ashes of world war 2 – like the Philippines and especially Indonesia – were in an anti-imperialist or anti-colonial mood. The British, we must be reminded, did not give any of us independence because it has reached a state of enlightenment, where being selfless, compassionate and generous was a second nation to it – rather it was forced to grant us all independence, simply because it was too weak to colonize us any further.
Despite not being able to colonise us any longer, it was still interested in exploiting us, but its ability to exploit us was being challenged by both the communists and the nationalist in the newly independent countries like Indonesia, who were opposed to its continuous presence in the region, as a form of neo-colonialism.
It is because it was faced with challenges by both the communist insurgents as well as the nationalists in states of Indonesia or Philippines, which had designs on Sarawak and Sabah respectively, that the British decided to combine Sabah, Sarawak, Semenanjung and Singapore into a single polity – in order to prevent its usurpation by the regional nationalists and communists.
By banding us together, the British were able to thwart being overtaken by the communists as well as perhaps prevent Sabah and Sarawak from becoming a part of the Philippines and Indonesia, and thus be able to continue to keep us all under their sphere of influence.
At that time, Sabahan's and Sarawakians likely agreed to become a part of the federation, because they too were diniclined to being absorbed into Indonesia or the Philippines, or be taken over by the communist.
In other words, unlike what Karim thinks, Sabah and Sarawak did not join the Federation because we in Semenanjung courted it and promised it the sky and the moon if only it agreed to be ours.
Sarawak in other words, did not join Malaysia like it was a beautiful and attractive bride who could have lived her own life happily or chose from a dozen other suitors, but instead chose us because we promised to give her jewelries and house full of maids that will treat her like a queen.
Instead, Sarawak joined Malaysia like how a lamb joins a a ram, to protect the herd when the wolves are nearby. A bride can complain that she had been misled by a groom that promised her to treat her like a queen but then only gave her the life of a maid, when she did not get the car, house, maids and jewelries that she was promised during the courtship, but the lamb should actually be more appreciative of the ram, because it was the ram that did the lions share of work to keeping the wolves at bay.
If Sarawak wants to claim that it had paid for the protection that it sought from to the ram after serving it for many years, and thus it is should be released from its debt of gratitude and be allowed to lead its own life, now that it is bigger and stronger, that is its prerogative.
But what it shouldn’t do, is claim that it gained nothing by being a part of the herd, or that it was cheated, exploited and betrayed by the ram or in being a part of herd, just because it is now older and stronger, while the ram has become old and weak, while forgetting how afraid and stressed it was, when the wolves were near and it was vulnerable and young.
TheRealNehruism (nehru.sathiamoorthy@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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