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WARISAN president Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal has downplayed Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor’s call to increase Sabah’s parliamentary representation, saying the demand was “nothing new” as the Federal Constitution already provides East Malaysia with one-third of seats.
Shafie said the issue was not a matter of generosity from Putrajaya but a constitutional right that had been ignored for decades.
“Well, it is provided under the law, the constitution is one-third. We are not begging. It’s the right, which should have been done before. But, you know, it’s yet to be passed by Parliament anyway,” he said when asked for views on the matter by reporters after a party function in Tuaran.
Article 46 of the Federal Constitution, amended by the Malaysia Act 1963, originally allocated one-third of Dewan Rakyat seats to Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak as a safeguard when Malaysia was formed,
However, after Singapore’s exit from Malaysia in 1965, its 15 seats were removed, leaving Sabah and Sarawak with only about 27% of the total seats, below the one-third safeguard originally intended.
The one-third East Malaysia representation in Parliament is not new to Shafie.
The Sabah opposition leader had raised the matter in July 2020 when he was chief minister, and repeated it in October 2024 after Sarawak Premier Tan Sri Abang Johari Openg made a similar call.
He also did not shift his stance when Sabah pressed for more parliamentary seats during the recently concluded Malaysia Agreement 1963 Implementation Action Council (MTPMA63) meeting in Kuching, Sarawak.
The call was made by Hajiji in the presence of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who chaired the council, and Abang Johari.
The matter was disclosed in a statement issued by the Chief Minister’s Department on Friday.
When asked whether the push might be an election sweetener, Shafie smiled and told the reporter: “That’s your word.”
Still, he remembered that the call was hardly groundbreaking.
“Well, nothing new to us. I mean, this is… there will be some sort of goodies coming up, announcement after announcement,” he said.
Whether it was election fodder or not, Shafie then voiced scepticism that it would be acted on quickly, questioning whether it would even be tabled at the upcoming October budget sitting.
“Announcements after announcements may sound good, but the people want concrete decisions,’ he said.
He added that if the government was truly serious, the move should have been initiated at the start of its administration, not at the tail end of its term.
“Why only break ground in the fifth year? Why not the first or second year? If it was serious, it would have been done much earlier,” he said.
Shafie contrasted this with his own short-lived administration, saying Warisan had moved quickly to distribute land titles and push for downstream industries.
“When we were in government, not even 20 months, we immediately issued land grants. We started building cooking oil plants in Tawau and Keningau because Sabah is Malaysia’s biggest palm oil producer.
“Our aim was to ensure our own children could benefit from jobs created downstream,” he said, adding that similar opportunities in oil, gas and mineral resources should be brought to Sabah instead of being centred elsewhere. - September 14, 2025
