Zaid Ibrahim recently observed that the oil found near Sarawak belongs to Petronas and Malaysia not Petros and Sarawak. He didn’t say it so directly as I said it – he said it in a very long winded and lawyerly fashion – but this is the crux of his contention.
In response to what Zaid said, a Sarawakian assemblyman from Satok by the name of Ibrahim Baki retorted in an equally long winded and lawyerly fashion, that no, Zaid is wrong, the oil actually belongs to Petros and Sarawak, not Petronas and Malaysia.
After Ibrahim Baki said what he said, Sarawak premier Abang Johari Openg, unsurprisingly, added his two cents worth and insisted that Ibrahim Baki was right.
Reading the back and forth between all of them, I am quite convinced that for all intent and purpose, the oil will in the end belong to Petronas and Malaysia, because if Putrajaya and Sarawak takes the dispute to court, all that is going to happen is that a bunch of lawyers and judges are going be engaged in a long and lawyerly debate with each other, which won’t reach a conclusion for a very long time, and for as long as they keep arguing amongst themselves, the oil will continue to belong to Petronas and Malaysia.
We tend to assume that the law is arbitrated along the lines of truth and justice, but in reality, the final arbiter of the law is likely power and might. When it doesn’t matter – like when it concerns the affairs of a common citizen like you and me – then the law might be arbitrated along the lines of truth and justice, but when it concerns the affair of the powerful who rule the nation or the world, then for all intent and purpose, the pursuit of truth and justice will be obscured, and the law will be arbitrated along the lines of “might is right.”
That is why the international court of justice can accuse national leaders like Putin to have committed war crimes and seek his arrest, but Putin will likely never be arrested, for as long as Russia is mighty and powerful. The same goes with Donald Trump. Trump might technically still be facing criminal charges even now that he is the president, but I will bet my last ringgit that nothing is going to happen to Trump, for as long as he remains president. Even in our own country, Najib probably would have never gone to jail if not for the fact that he lost power in 2018.
Considering that, if the lawyers and judges have to reach a decision that will require Putrajaya to give billion of ringgits that it has been accustomed to collect for decades, to the Sarawak state government, which is hostile to it, I am quite sure that our lawyers and judges are unlikely to be very motivated to conclude their debates and reach a decision quickly – instead, they will more likely use all of their ability and knowhow, to prevaricate and demur over the matter, until a more suitable conditions for the matter to be resolved arises.
To put it in more simple terms, what the Sarawak government needs to do to get things like the oil and gas right or 35 percent of the parliament seats, is get the other countries in the world - like China or America or India or Japan or Thailand or Singapore or Indonesia - to urge Putrajaya to give Sarawak a fair hearing.
If the nations of the world urges Putrajaya to do so, then the lawyers and the judges involved in coming up with a decision in regards to the dispute between Putrajaya and Sarawak, feeling that they are performing in a stage where the world is watching, might be emboldened to a reach a decision quickly, and perhaps even be brave enough to come out with a decision that will go against the Federal government.
But the problem is, for the world to concern itself about the dispute between Sarawak and Putrajaya, Sarawak will need to take the case to the world.
By default, the world is of the opinion that the oil and gas found in a country belongs to the nation, not to a particular state or district or township within that nation where that oil is found.
When anybody in the world is asked to whom the oil found in Ghawar province belongs to, everybody will say Saudi Arabia, not the provincial government of the Ghawar province or the population of Ghawar.
In the same way, if the world is asked who owns the oil that is found in Malaysia, the answer they will give is the government and people of Malaysia, not the government and people of Sarawak.
To change their mind, the government and people of Sarawak will have to persuade them to see the issue in a different light.
Can Sarawak do that ?
Well, I for one seriously doubt that it will be able to pull it off.
I don't think that Sarawak even knows how to take its case to the world, what more convince the world to discard what it by default believes to be fair and true, and adopt Sarawak's point of view as what is true and fair instead.
The Federal government not only has the advantage of having the world believing in its point of view by default, it also controls the access to reach out to the world and a very talented leader by the name of Anwar Ibrahim who has a track record of moving the heart and mind of the world to see a matter as how he wants them to see it.
During the Reformasi era, Anwar convinced the world that Mahathir was wrong and he was right, although Anwar was in a position of severe disadvantage in comparison to Mahathir.
Recently, Anwar has also been able to make overtures to Russia and speak strongly in favour of Palestine, without offending the West and even making them believe that he might be right.
These are not at all easy feats. It takes supreme talent and skill to move the heart and the mind of the world in such a way.
In comparison to Anwar, who does Sarawak have to move the heart and mind of the world?
No one.
The last card that Sarawak has to play to own the oil and gas that it believes is its, is to take the matter to court, and because that is the last card that it has to play, I believe that it will be the Federation that will be the one that will continue to own all the oil and gas found in Malaysia, regardless of which state it is found in.
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