FOCUS | Malaysian PM Najib draws flak for touting 1962 'Sabah referendum'

Joel C. Paredes, InterAksyon.com

MANILA, Philippines - Even Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak is now being criticized in his own country for claiming that Sabah had, from the start, wanted to be part of Malaysia. He made the remarks in one of the briefings where his government was explaining its handling of the crisis triggered by the stand-off in Lahad Datu between loyal supporters of the Sultanate of Sulu who reasserted its proprietary rights on the former North Borneo.

The stand-off that began Feb. 12 has since erupted in violence, with a combined police-military Malaysian force using air raids and mortar attacks on at least three areas where the followers, led by Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram III’s younger brother Raja Muda Agbimuddin, are believed to have broken up in guerrilla units.

Najib’s claim that two-thirds of the people of oil-rich Sabah agreed to be part of Malaysia in 1962 was disputed by United Borneo Front (UBF) chair Jeffrey Kitingan, who said in a statement released to the Malaysian media that there was never a referendum that confirmed the Sabahans’s desire to be part of the Federation.

Najib claimed that two-thirds of the people in Sabah agreed to be part of Malaysia in 1962 when the British and Malayan governments appointed a Commission of Enquiry for North Borneo and Sarawak to determine if they supported the proposal to create a Federation of Malaysia.

Referendum of 'less than 4 percent' of people
In fact, the so-called referendum in 1962-63 was actually only a sampling survey of less than four per cent of the Sabah population,” according to Kitingan, a Harvard-trained politician who was once detained under the Malaysian Internal Security act on suspicion of plotting to make Sabah secede from the Federation.

Najib said recently there was no question of Sabah being part of Malaysia, being part of the task of the 1962 commission chaired by Lord Cameron Cobbold, the former governor of the Bank of England, which later released its findings and recommendations in what is generally known as the 20-point agreement. The Cobbold commission report eventually became the basis for formally proclaiming the Federation of Malaysia on Sept. 16, 1963, with the inclusion of North Borneo and Sarawak but leaving Brunei as a British protectorate.

"(But) Najib must realize that Sabah belongs to the people of Sabah. Malaysia does not own Sabah as the Malaysia Agreement is yet to be implemented. Sabah is not a piece of lifeless property to be fought between the Philippines (Sulu claim) and Malaya,” Kitingan said. “Therefore, any talks between Malaysia/Malaya and the Philippines must include Sabah because only the people of Sabah can decided what they want.”

Kitingan also insisted that the Sultanate’s claim, “whether valid or not, must be resolved once and for all by bringing all the relevant parties to the table within the ambit of  (Great) Britain and the United Nations and find a peaceful solution.”

That, apparently, is his reply to Najib’s bold assertion that, like it or not, Sabah will “always belong” to Malaysia.

From his modest home beside a mosque in Taguig City, the aging, ailing Sulu Sultan Kiram III meanwhile, simply replies, with an air of confidence about the justness of his cause, “we will see.”

Political dissent: the United Borneo Front
When he founded the United Borneo Front in 2010, Kitingan had declared that they would defend justice and rights of Sabah and Sarawak under the Malaysia agreement in 1963.  He alleged that Sabah and Sarawak were “cheated” in the Malaysian Federation and treated merely as two “appendages” among the 13 states by the Federal Government.

But apart from the Sultanate of Sulu’s claim, and even before the formation of the federation, there have been efforts to stop the inclusion of Sabah as of part of Malaysia.

Before Malaysia was federated, Sheikh Azahari bin sheikh Mahmud, popularly known as A.M. Azahari, also campaigned for Brunei’s independence and proposed the merging with North Borneo, as Sabah was once called, along with Sarawak, to form a North Kalimantan state with the Sultan of Brunei as the constitutional monarch.

The North Kalimantan (or Kalimantan Utara) was seen as a “post-decolonization alternative” against the Malaysia plan. Local opposition was also primarily based on economic, political, historical and cultural differences between Borneo states and Malaya, as well as their refusal “to be subjected under peninsular political domination.”

After his short-lived revolt failed, Azahari fled to Manila to evade arrest by British and Commonwealth forces, which quelled the uprising. He eventually fled to Jakarta where he was granted asylum by President Sukarno in 1963, and lived in exile in Kalimantan. Azahari died in 2002 in Bogor, Indonesia.

The Philippines claim on Sabah was also debated in the United Nations, which the British government rejected.  Indonesia, on the other hand, adopted a hostile policy towards Malaya and subsequently Malaysia. President Sukarno effectively sought a confrontation with Malaya by supporting Azahari’s Brunei revolt.

It was in this “weary and turbulent” political environment that British and Malayan governments created the Commission on Enquiry, which Cobbold chaired, with these members: Wong Pow Nee, chief Minister of Penang; Mohammed Ghazali Shafie, Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Malaya; Anthony Abell, former governor of Sarawak; and David Watherston, former chief secretary of Malaya.

Sultanate’s claim, a  ‘non-issue’?
When Sabah became part of the federation, Malaysia continued to respect the 1878 agreement forged by the Sultan of Sulu granting the North Borneo Chartered Company’s lease over the territory. However, Malaysia later declared that the Sultanate’s claim was a “non-issue,” with Sabahans never wanting to be part of the Philippines or of the sultanate of Sulu.
Despite being part of the federation, Sabah was administered for sometime by the political opposition during its formative years.  In the early 1990s, opposition politicians were arrested under the Internal Security Act for allegedly being involved in plans to make Sabah secede from the Malaysian federation.

Kitingan, who was jailed in the crackdown, was also one of the critics of the administration, which his group  blamed for making Sabah “insecure by supporting Muslim rebellion in the Philippines and supplying them weapons, giving them refuge and training facilities in Sabah.”
Kitingan criticized former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad and the UMNO for “deploying them as voters in Sabah through the ‘Project IC Mahathir,’ despite knowing full well that the same group of people from the Philippines have unsettled claims over Sabah.”

The incursions by the Sultanate of Sulu represented proof, said Kitingan, that Malaysia had failed in securing the safety and security of Sabahans. “Now that the fear felt by Sabahans has become a reality, Najib, as the current premier, must not only guarantee the security of Sabahans but he must also restore their confidence, because security was the number one reason why Sabahans agreed to be part of Malaysia in 1963,” Kitingan said.