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(Sabah and Sarawak were “cheated” in the Malaysian Federation and treated merely as two “appendages” among the 13 states by the Federal Government)
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.
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 Un-Aware 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.
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.
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.
Sultanate’s Claim, is not 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.
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.”
Research:
Datuk Delmar Nur Faramarz Ferdowsi Salah Ad-Din Taclibon, Royal Hashemite Sultanate of Sulu and Sabah under HM Sultan Muhammad Fuad A. Kiram I
Reference: Excerpted: Joel C. Paredes, March 19, 2013 1:22 PM
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