The Sarawak Problem

• 21 April 2019
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The Federal Government face a thorny problem over Sarawak and what to do about it. The root of the problem lies in the past. Not the colonial past nor the preceding Brooke era but the events following on Sarawak’s accession to Malaysia in 1963.

As with many of the major problems in the modern world the three letter word oil is at the root of the problem. Although oil in northern Borneo was first discovered in the Miri area of Sarawak at the beginning of the twentieth century it was the far greater oilfield in neighbouring Brunei that focussed attention, and profit, up to the nineteen sixties with the Lutong field in Sarawak contributing only a very small portion of the total production.

All that soon changed with the exploitation of very large deposits in and offshore Sarawak. The State went from being a financial liability development wise to a potential bonanza. A bigger problem for the Federal government was that natural resources are a State matter not a Federal one under the Constitution.

What ought to have happened was an agreement between Kuala Lumpur and Kuching covering these new oil riches. What did happen was that crooked Sarawak politicians, acting totally illegally, handed over Sarawak’s oil to the Malaysian State oil company. The compensation for this, illegal, cession? A blind eye to the criminal destruction of the vast tropical forests of Sarawak to the personal profit of crooked Sarawak politicians, mostly from the minority Malay/Melanau community, though aided and abetted by crooked politicians from the majority native community-

The huge wealth from oil went into the Federal coffers and the equally huge wealth from tropical timber went into the pockets of crooked Sarawak politicians and their Chinese associates whom they needed both to cut and sell the timber of both of which tasks they were incapable.

All this went on during decades of UMNO domination of Malaysian politics and the real facts only emerged when the reforming PH government came to power. One of the first consequences of that was the defection to the PH side of the majority of Sarawak MLAs elected under the UMNO/BN banner though they retained their party name and counted in their ranks many who had been involved in the rape of Sarawak’s forests. The UMNO appointed State Governor still sits in the mansion of the Brookes and he colonial Governors and the majority in the State Assembly, elected under the UMNO banner, remain in place.

In other words nothing has changed so far as Sarawak concerned. It remains a BN dominated State with a BN majority government in place. The billions from its timber are parked in secret accounts world wide and the thieves sit in the Federal Assembly.

Many Malaysians would, if they were aware of this history, want something, in fact a lot, done about it. There will be claims that matters can only be adjusted by a reform of the Constitution and that even with the Sarawak BN votes there is no two thirds majority in the Federal Assembly to effect that.

To that conundrum there is a simple solution. A step by step solution. First let loose the MACC in Sarawak to effect a wholesale cleansing of political life in the State and then hold the State elections. That should produce the necessary majority  in the Federal Assembly to agree solutions acceptable to both sides.

One thing is certain. The current illegal arrangements cannot be allowed to stand and the current crooks must move from illegal luxury to jail.