Joe Fernandez | Dec 23, 08 3:46pm
Former Sabah secretary Simon Sipaun sees the redistribution of the state’s population of illegal immigrants throughout Malaysia as the “final solution” to an intractable problem.

Claiming that their presence is a gross example of the state being shortchanged by its membership in the federation of Malaysia, he said the local population is in danger of being swamped by “impoverished, miserable, hungry hordes from the southern Philippines in particular, besides those from Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh”.

“The blame is on the relevant authorities (federal government) for allowing them in illegally,” said Sipaun, in justifying the “final solution”.

“Two books, ‘IC Projek’ (Project IC), and ‘Lelaki Malaysia Terakhir’ (The Last Malaysian Male) have identified national and state leaders who are alleged to have played important roles associated with the illegal immigrants issue,” he said.

“To the best of my knowledge, none of those leaders mentioned have refuted or denied the allegations.”

He was elaborating on the main points of his presentation, ‘The Formation of Malaysia and Development in Sabah’ at the Institute of Islamic Understanding Malaysia in Kuala  Lumpur on Dec 18.

Sipaun’s “gut feeling” is that there are more illegals than locals among Sabah’s estimated 3.5 million population.

He said Malaysia Plan allocations for the state are insufficient since this has to be shared with the illegals including those who have managed to get their hands on identity documents.

“The mother of all problems in Sabah is the unusually large population of illegal immigrants. It is quickly changing the economic, social, cultural and political landscape of the state,” said Sipaun, also the vice-chairperson of the Human Rights Commission.

“The question that is in the minds of many Sabahans is: ‘Why has the government allowed this to happen?’ Thousands of people have called for a royal commission of inquiry to be established to determine who are responsible for this state of affairs.

“The day will come when the Philippines need not claim Sabah any more due to a reverse takeover which, in my view, has long started.”

‘Shortchanging of Sabah’

Sipaun said he had warned community leaders in 1962, on the eve of independence and formation of Malaysia, that Sabah would need an exit strategy.

His concerns included the fact that Sabah, like the other Borneo states, did not have people sufficiently qualified and experienced enough to negotiate with Malaya and Singapore.

The best approach would have been self-rule initially, he said, followed by independence before considering the possibility of entering the federation.

“It was not to be and our concerns were not taken into consideration. Malayan leaders wanted the Borneo states in to balance the large Chinese numbers in Singapore.

“When Singapore left Malaysia in 1965, the Federation of Malaysia Agreement in fact ceased to exist. This may account for the fact that the interpretation of the word ‘federation’  in Article 160 now refers to that established in 1957 under the federation of Malaya.”

The retention of Sabah and Sarawak is therefore another example of the Borneo states being shortchanged, he claimed.  

The third example is that Malaysia has moved away from a federation towards a unitary state, where the “Federal, State and Concurrent Lists of a Federation are no longer applicable”

“Instead, the states are only left with local governments - in any case appointed and financed by the federal government - and land matters. Even in these, there are such federal agencies as the National Land Council and National Council for Local Government.”

Sipaun also fears that excellent race relations in Sabah are being slowly poisoned by elements of racial polarisation that are distinct in the peninsula, while the state is now ranked among the poorest in the country.