The Great Momogun Tragedy

Our Momogun nation is now facing the greatest tragedy yet; a tragedy that guarantee the continued marginalization of the Momogun people of Sabah.  No matter if it’s UMNO or if its PKR in government, either one will guarantee the marginalization of the Momogun people; and the reason is simple, because they share the same DNA and their vision of Malaysia is tainted by prejudices in favor of the Malaya protocol.  There is no escaping this truth.

Marginalization is defined as “to place in a position of marginal importance, influence, or power.”  The synonyms of marginal are “bordering, insignificant, low, minimal, minor, negligible, on the edge, peripheral, rimming, small, verging.”

What is marginalization?  Marginalization is the intended exclusion and subjugation of a particular racial, ethnic, or social group. Generally, this is done at the economic level, although, in Sabah we have experienced marginalization both politically and economically.

Momoguns are a marginalized people in Sabah.  It is an irony, the fact, that this country is our motherland.  This is our nation.  The Momogun nation of Sabah; land below the wind.  At the northern tip of Borneo lies the land of the Momoguns.  There is no place on earth that we call home other than North Borneo.

From time immemorial, Momoguns roam freely over this land.  The land of plenty, land akin to the “Garden of Eden.”  A beautiful world amidst the oxygen rich vegetation, the Momoguns live happily with bountiful “aramaiti” to make the rounds.  We have sworn the oath of the great bobolians that this land belongs to the Momoguns.  This fact had always been understood by all; but now we face the greatest threat that would destroy the very foundation of the Momoguns in this great land of North Borneo.

Strangers, outsiders and foreigners have always been welcome to our great land, but since the British left, our trust had been betrayed by the Malayans.  The Malayans manipulated our genuine honor, took advantage of our kindness and sincerity, cheated our belief systems, and attacked the integrity of our nation.  Under the cruel racism and religiously evil bigotry mind-sets of this Malayan race headed by Mahathir Mohamed, come the propagations of the inhumane social and political engineering scheme by encouraging foreigners of Islamist background to migrate to Sabah and giving them instant citizenships to live in our land for the sole purpose of marginalizing the Momogun people.

With this act of treason against our nation, Mahathir wield the dictatorial bully pulpit by usurping the powers of the federation's security forces to implement his cruel program of marginalizing the original sons of the soil of North Borneo rendering them incapacitate and at risk of being a pauper in their own home and a refugee in their own country.

Mahathir, motivated by race and religion seek to destroy the hopes and dreams of a kind an innocent people.  Moulded by a violent race he comes to destroy the Momogun people of North Borneo.  He deceitfully and cruelly invaded our country by engineering a takeover of our government.  Short of a massacre, his regime started the marginalization and deprivation scheme against our people to the point we have become slaves to his racial mastery.

A man of mix Indian and Malay breed now holds our life in his hands.  His legacy now guarantees that the Malay race plays a dominant role in the affairs of our government.  He had blindsided the Malay race themselves by skilfully defining the Malay race as anyone who professes the Islamic faith is automatically regarded by Malaysian law as Malay.  Therefore a Pakistani, Indian, Filipino, Bugis, Kokos, Dusuns and others who practices and converts to the Islamic faith are automatically regarded as Malay in the eyes of the law.  This definition basically hijacks the Malay race and maliciously cheated the people of the land of their heritage; for now foreigners can call themselves Malay and Bumiputra just because they practice the Islamic faith.  This is the cruelest social engineering known to man in the modern world.  This is the product of a cruel mamak and the ignorant Malays.  It is one of the greatest con job ever in the history of a country.

Today, we are seeing the product of such stupid act of government motivated by race and religion.  Only the word cruelty comes to mind to describe such a man who can think to displace the kind human souls who have long lived on this land.  A cruel man like Mahathir, have sin against the Momogun people of Sabah.  He has sin against the Malays, the Momoguns of Sabah and humanity in general.  If God must punish, this is the kind of human being that must be punished.  His crime is against both the Malay race and the Momoguns of Sabah.  He had used deceit to manipulate both racial groups to further his selfish agenda.

Malayans have no rights whatsoever to apply colonialism towards Sabah.  Yet, selfishly they made it their affair to subjugate us.  Are we not humans like them?  Are they more superior intellectually to us?  Are they a superior race?  I don't think so.  In fact, their act of aggression towards us shows that they are of an inferior stock.  Will their subjugation continue indefinitely?  No!  And never!

Such form of subjugation has never and will never last in any historical context.  There is no precedence in the world for such aggression to last forever.  Not even the mighty British Empire can last.  None whatsoever!    The Malayan Malays should take heed today that they must make rational decisions based on common sense and the sensibilities of the human existence.  If they hope for a brighter future for Malaysia, it is incumbent upon them to remove all affairs of government from the clutches of race and religion.  Race and religion must be removed from the affairs of government in order to build a great nation.  This is the prerequisite to build a truly great nation.

The Malayans have a great opportunity today to change the future destiny of their society by overwhelmingly supporting a new government in Malaya under the PKR leadership.  At least give PKR a chance to right the wrongs done by the racism and religious bigotry of UMNO.  There is no guarantee that PKR will be a better government, but it is worth their life to give PKR the benefit of the doubt, for whatever it is UMNO has exhausted its credibility to the people in the Malaysian federation.  A government of a great country cannot be motivated by race and religion.  It is as simple as that!

Here in Sabah, Malayan political parties have no local standi to encroach upon the affairs of Sabah.  Malayan political parties are best left to operate in Malaya.  Malaya may not like the fact that we Sabahans do not welcome them, but they must take the courageous step to retreat themselves out of Sabah.  By doing so, they will gain the trust of the people of Sabah.  Only with trust can Sabah share the hopes and dreams of its Malayan partners.

Sabahans and especially the Momoguns must reject totally all Malayan political parties.  No matter it is UMNO, PKR, DAP, PAS, KITA, GERAKAN and etc.  Sabahans must never vote for a non-local party.  In the eyes of our constitution and the formation of Malaysia's agreement, it would be treasonous to vote for a non-local party.

There is no benefit for Sabahans to vote for a non-local party.  We have more to lose than to gain for supporting non-local parties.  We must use common sense when we vote for our government.  Ask yourself what has the BN government done for Sabah?  BN is headed by UMNO and the rest of the member parties are just parrots or puppets.  These puppets are just a gang of yes man!  They dare not speak up against the acts of injustice by the UMNO led government.  A good example is the case on Cabot age policy.  If our Sabah based political parties served to defend the interest of Sabahans they would speak up against the Cabot age policy.  Another example is the hostile foreigners such as the Suluks who proclaimed himself as Sultan and now attempts to rally the Suluks to further marginalize the Momoguns of Sabah.  None of these puppets in BN took the effort to voice out the Momogun people's wishes.  When the Momoguns are the poorest in Sabah, none of these puppets made any meaningful attempt to address the issue and find a solution to empower the Momogun to achieve prosperity.

These appeasements towards UMNO are destroying our people.  The Momoguns are dissolution and deprived of a better lifestyle because of the selfish agenda of the Malayans.  These BN component parties have lost all credibility to govern the people of Sabah, especially the Momoguns.  Anyone supporting BN component parties are simply doing so because of selfishness.  There are just absolutely no credible reasons to support BN.  Sabah would not be referred as the poorest state if UMNO-BN had managed this country well.  It is just that simple.  If for 20 years the government cannot make the people of Sabah prosperous, than the government have failed.

The great tragedy continues today under this nasty regime called UMNO-BN.  We have lost our Native Customary Rights (NCR), lands continued to be plundered and sold to rich interest groups to further their selfish plans, foreigners continues to be given MyKad, Islamization continues to be applied against our poor Momoguns, and its easier for a foreigner from Pakistan to get a MyKad than our own Momogun people.  Malaysian Islamic creed uses a trap law within Syariah forbidding anyone to leave Islam – and to think we live in a democratic world.  Suluk invaders from the Philippines were given food when they encroached upon our land with weapons.  It took our Police personnel to die before our government starts to take action against these terrorist, and even then half-heartedly at best.

There are just tons of ill advice policies being made by this ill gotten and in fact illegitimate regime.  This current government is basically an illegitimate government because they have won the government by reasons of foreigner's votes.  Foreigners are given MyKad and allowed to vote to keep UMNO in power.  This is the type of government we have today.  It is not a government by the people of Sabah, but a government by foreigners.

If we were to do a complete government personnel background checks today, there will be no doubt that we will find employees with questionable citizenship status.  There are also very few Momoguns employed in government today because of the heavy bias towards of applicants with Islamic background.  This government have emulated the Malayan ideology of race and religion thus they made it a point to hire 90% of the government employees to be of the Islamic faith.  Today's government policies, which are motivated by race and religion is again another method to marginalize the Momogun people further.  If this continues, it can only lead to one possible outcome and that is the de-oxygenated Momoguns.

This government continues to destroy all the hopes and dreams of the Momoguns simply because it is utilizing the ideology of race and religion.  Take for example the government giving money to religious groups.  This is an act of corruption; a form of bribery and a form of government involvement in the idiosyncratic beliefs of mankind.  Giving money to religious bodies is just wrong and an evil attempt to manipulate the powers of government.    They pretended to give 2 million to a church or a Buddhist temple then take such gesture as a justification to give 100 million to build a Mosque.  Giving to religious bodies should never be practiced by government.  Government should practice a separation of religion and the affairs of government.

The Momoguns form the majority people of Sabah and yet they are the most marginalized.  The tiny minority of Pakistani and Malay community gets to hold the reign of power while we Momoguns get to bite the dust.  Is there any justice to our human dilemma?  Do we Momoguns have to convert to Islam first before we are given government position of any significance?

Shame to all the Momoguns who hold a high position in government just because they are Muslim; they are just a bunch of selfish and bigotted bunch, thinking they are high and mighty for getting such a position.  A position based on religion and not based on merit is nothing to shout about.  In fact, it is a disgraced to the Momogun people and its legacy.

Momoguns who convert to Islam because of government positions and money are just some of the most low life people in the world.  These are persons who have no pride and dignity in their souls.  I respect people who convert to another religion because they believe strongly in their conviction, but to convert because of monetary gain and job promise are just too disgraceful to even mention.  But these are the kinds of characters and personalities that this current government is breeding.  This is not a government of the people, by the people or for the people.  This regime is the master and we are their slaves.

Momoguns must realize that there is no future with this type of government.  While we still have a little democratic window, we must use the power of our votes to remove this incompetent government.  Let's be a little mature and realistic, there is just no way for good governance where government policies are motivated by race and religion.  This is a fact of history in the world and proven in world history.  Are we to continue to be gullible and let these manipulators to control our future?  No, and we must never again allow this to happen if we care about the future of our children.

This current regime and all Malaya based political parties, no matter they are headed by Malay or a Chinese are all wrong for Sabah.  When it comes to our own Sabah government it must be govern by a good local party.  A good local party, whose interest lies with Sabah.  The Malayan parties’ first priority is their self-interest, which is the Malaya interest.  That is a fact and we must not kid ourselves about it.  Just say NO to Malaya parties.  We must take a strong personal conviction and support our own good local party.

What we need now is to get back our original autonomy, then implement our Sabah IC.  This is a critical step to empower our genuine citizens.  With this simple step we would solve the three decades problems with PTI and PATAI.  We Sabahans must take a brave and unyielding resolve to realize these goals.  If ever we have to fight for our life, it is for these reasons today that we must fight wholeheartedly with our life.  This is our ticket to a bright future.  This is how Momoguns can find its oxygen again.  This is how the Malaysian dream can come to reality.  It is a win win situation for all parties involve.  It will be a win win situation for Malaysia as a whole.

This is the goal of SAPP.  We Momoguns must realized the beauty of this solution and embrace it wholeheartedly.  This is our peaceful ticket to a great future within the Malaysian federation.  Let's make this happen and we will surely find peace and prosperity at the end of the tunnel.  Malaysia still has a great chance to build a great nation.  Sabahan must have no doubt but to unite wholeheartedly to support SAPP.  Reject all other parties and fight only for SAPP.  This is a history made for SAPP.  There is nothing that they can change if history is with us.  Let us take this opportunity to guarantee a great future under a new government of Sabah headed by SAPP.  Do not let this PRU13 be another episode of great tragedy for Momoguns.

By Wilfred Gaban
Director at PIPPA – Progressive Institute of Public Policy Analysis;
President of Kadu Foundation – An NGO dedicated to the health and welfare of the Momogun community