KOTA KINABALU: Sabah secession talks have no place in multiracial Malaysia; it is too drastic and utterly irresponsible, said Kota Belud MP Datuk Abdul Rahman Dahlan.
He said in today’s globalized era, Sabahans could not afford to still have the narrow ideology of Sabah for Sabahans, or even Malaysia only for Malaysians.
They must realize, he added, that the world was now borderless and a simple decision made by powerful world leaders from thousands of miles away could affect the lives of even those in the most remote villages anywhere on earth.
“Malaysia is built on a strong foundation of unity, where people from different territories who share the same history, have come together under a concept of federalism, for mutual benefit and shared progress. So, suggesting to interrupt this synergy and unity, and to throw our country into chaos cannot be right,” he said in his talk for students of Universiti Malaysia Sabah here on Friday evening.
Advising the students to be wary of the people trying to instigate them to support an attempt for Sabah to secede from Malaysia, Abdul Rahman said Sabahans should focus their minds and energies to finding solutions on how Sabah and the rest of the nation could better work together and utilise resources for a more inclusive and effective development.
Sabahans, he added, should think about how they could work harder and faster in order to catch up with the rest of the country in terms of social and economic development, not pointing fingers and bickering with their partners in the federation.
“Getting out of Malaysia to become our own country is a romantic dream. The People Republic of Sabah… it has a nice romantic sound to it. But those people who are talking about secession, they are only talking about leaving Malaysia. But then what. What’s next?
“How about our economy, how do we ensure security and safety of our people? Our development, how do we maintain its momentum? What about our unity? The illegal immigrants, how do we deal with them? As a new country, in order for the United Nation to recognize us, we must have citizens, and we need to give citizenship to every people who are staying within our borders at the time we form our country. To me, seceding from Malaysia is the fastest way to give citizenship to the illegal immigrants,” he quipped.
Abdul Rahman, who is the Minister of Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government, stressed that Sabah, just like Sarawak, had undergone much progress and development within Malaysia.
Although the proponents of secession had tried to argue that Sabah was losing out in its partnership with the federal government, it was a fact, and no one could deny that Sabah had benefited much and would continue to benefit more as a partner in Malaysia, he said.
He said claims that the people from Peninsular Malaysia and the federal government were mistreating Sabahans were also not true.
These, he said, were just irresponsible remarks aimed to instigate hatred among the Malaysians in Borneo and those in Peninsular Malaysia.
“I still remember back in the early days of Malaysia, we did not have any teachers. It was the ‘Malayan’ as some of us referred to them, who came here from Johore, Penang, Malacca and other parts of Semenanjung to teach our children.
“Mind you, at the time we did not even have roads and electricity. But those teachers left their families and comfortable life back home to come to our aid…to help educate the people of Sabah so that we too can develop and progress.
“I know this because my father’s house used to be a ‘hotel’, a temporary shelter where the teachers stopped before continuing their journey to where they would be teaching. If the ‘Malayan’ are bad, if they don’t care for us, then what do you have to say about those teachers?” he said.
Rahman also rejected arguments by certain quarters that Sabah should secede from Malaysia as the federal government had failed to ensure the security of the state, as shown by the Tanduo incident last year.
In fact, he said, the incursion was a perfect example of how federalism had benefited Sabah, a testament to how the federal government would do everything in its power to defend the sovereignty of the state from foreign elements.
“The federal government had resolved the problem. They (Kiram) came with guns and we deployed our soldiers to thwart the threat. We tell them you come again and we will kill you,” he said, adding that the federal government had increased military assets in Sabah to prevent a recurrence of the incident.