MANY people in Sabah commended Datuk Ghapur Salleh, MP (BN) of Kalabakan, for his straight talk in Parliament recently. I jotted down a few catch phrases that people liked with regards to the economic comparison between the peninsula and Sabah.
He said that the gap between the peninsula and Sabah is seperti langit dan bumi (like the sky and the earth), meaning Sabah people are poor, that “people in the kampung still dug holes for toilets” and on the issue of the Pan Borneo Highway construction, “Why give peninsula firms development jobs?”
Statements like these stay longer in people’s minds, stored in social media like You Tube, and from there find their way to other channels in the Internet.
Anyone can view them as often as they like and at any time, perhaps more as an entertainment. If one talks about blocking social media in Malaysia, I would say it’s like closing the water tap in our mothers’ kitchen.
Ordinary people in Sabah from both divides like the idea of talking straight.
This is because no one else has done it for a long time. All too often, we heard those who spoke up echoing the stereotypical yes, “sokong”.
We don’t find critical and analytical debates on many issues in the Malaysian Parliament; this can be contrasted with Parliamentary or Congressional debates in the United Kingdom, Australia or USA respectively.
Perhaps they are too advanced to compare with; usually Malaysian leaders are prone to compare Malaysia with countries like Thailand, Vietnam or Myanmar, not even with Singapore, on any subject.
There is a kind of misleading assumption; our YBs are underestimating the intelligence of non-politicians.
And worth noting, there are MPs who can’t even read financial statements. Do we then expect them to participate in serious debate to arrive at good decisions?
I’m not questioning how they become a “wakil rakyat”, but rather why did they want to become one?
Many Sabahans don’t feel they are represented in Parliament on the opposition bench. Look around, there is no Sabah-based local party.
Sabahan YBs in Pakatan, to them, are of the same kind found in BN. Many lack sensitivity and this is why Ghapur’s statement recently struck the right chord with Sabah people.
Ghapur said he has been a people’s representative for 35 years, if his time as State Assemblyman and Member of Parliament are combined.
For many this is too little too late, while others also say better late than never.
Let me also thank him, for letting the rest of the MPs in Parliament know that people in Sabah have not been treated well by the current system of government.
Ghapur recognised that people aren’t happy and because of that there are people who want to secede from the federation. He said he didn’t blame them even though he disagrees. But the poverty problem and injustice are true. He has no reason not to believe these people; they are the educated ones.
Ghapur said people still dug holes for toilets, but my account is worse than that. In many places people still simply defecate in the bushes.
I must add that many people still use firewood for cooking in houses and water is carried using pails from the rivers. The kind of bridges people use to cross the rivers are the hanging bridges built in the 70s.
What Ghapur pointed out is only the tip of the iceberg. Is this what it should be, 51 years after achieving independence?
Some Sabahans now don’t care whether leaders in Kuala Lumpur consider the issue of secession as serious or not. Some already think Malaysia’s Borneo states are detached from Malaysian Malaya.
People in Sabah have no record of being resilient. The old habit is still with the older generation; it’s the young ones on whom the hope for change relies.
The power of ordinary people and non-governmental organisations aren’t matched with the power of government in dismantling the stigma of kampung folks who can easily be swayed by handouts, blue plastic tanks and zinc roofs in the poverty-stricken society.
Not so long ago a federal minister made a statement that he wanted those dissatisfied about Malaysia, the disgruntled group, to give him a shopping list.
This was because another Minister was already threatening to arrest Sabahans.
In Sabah, almost all opposition members and political leaders involved in the debates and forums to do with Malaysia Agreement 1963 were interviewed by police soon after these events were completed, including this writer.
It’s the failure of Federal Government leaders on one hand and the failure of state leaders on the other in safeguarding the Malaysia Agreement 1963.
It isn’t enough to rebut by saying all those provisions are already contained in the Federal Constitution. In my view what is in the Federal Constitution is rather the summary.
If one wants to unfold the legal spirit of the agreement, legal experts can come up with various interpretations from documents such as the Cobbold Commission Report and the Inter-Governmental Committee report.
To some extent the current state leaders can only blame themselves.
As observed, “wakil rakyat” above fifty years old have lost their appetite and energy to serve people, yet still hang on to their position for reasons only they know.
Amde Sidik, a former law lecturer, is Chairman of the Progressive Institute of Public Policy Analysis, Sabah. The views expressed here are entirely his own.
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