MY piece from last Sunday on the Kapit Resolutions drew a number of comments from various quarters. To those readers who cared to say something at all about the subject, I’m truly grateful.
Generally, rest assured that I welcome comment on any of my articles – past, present or future – however critical these comments may be. I always find criticism educational, especially if it is constructive. It’s when readers start being over generous in their praise which I don’t deserve that I begin to get awkward or suspicious of their naivety.
I may go back to Kapit, nay, the resolutions, if there is necessity for some detailed explanation of each submission made by the 51 chiefs in 1962. A number of these men were still around in the early 1970s and 1980s; from them I had learnt a lot about their hopes for better prospects for their people in terms of economic and political future. I heard also of their fears about the future of Malaysia, especially after the separation of Singapore in 1965, should the terms and conditions of merger fail to to be observed by future minders of Malaysia.
For the moment, however, I wish to oblige one observant reader who emailed me. She was complaining that the subjects contained in the Inter-Governmental Committee Report (IGC), 1962 were too general to make a complete picture of Sarawak in Malaysia. Too general – that’s true – because a newspaper column is constrained by the limitation of space. However, I would advise her to find out more about a particular subject referred to in the IGC Report by reading that report itself in full.
Freedom of religion
During the debate on the merits and demerits of the Malaysia Project in 1961-2, one of the most important guarantees demanded by a large number of peoples in Sarawak and North Borneo before they could approve of the merger of their colonies with Malaya and Singapore was in respect of the freedom of religion in the new Federation.
Indeed there was an explicit assurance by the framers of the Malaysian Constitution to guarantee that freedom when they copied in to the old Article 3 (1) of the Malayan Constitution which states that “Islam is the religion of the Federation; but other religions may be practised in peace and harmony in any part of the Federation” and called it the Malaysian Constitution. As it was the situation in Penang and Melaka, so would it be in Sabah and Sarawak: no state religion bah.
The state assembly in Sabah or Sarawak might not enact a law to restrict the propagation of any religious belief without the vote of two-thirds majority of the members of the assembly.
In addition, no federal funds would be used for religious purposes in either state unless the state concerned agreed to accept the financial aid.
Since the official religion of the then Malaya and now Malaysia has always been Islam, and since federal funds have been used for education in the official religion, and, since neither Sabah nor Sarawak would be having state religion, a proportionate amount of the money spent on those religious institutions in Malaya would be channelled to the Borneo States as well. See Sections 36 and 37 of the old Malayan Education Act 1961 for a clearer explanation and the rationale for the funding.
Of Sabah’s position in this matter, Datuk Nicholas Fung Ngit Chung, former attorney general of the state, writes: “… Sabah will be given an amount for welfare purposes corresponding to the amount of federal funds spent in Malaya for religious purposes”. (‘The Constitution of Malaysia – Further Perspectives and Developments’ – edited by FA Trindade and HP Lee – Singapore, OUP, 1986).
In other words, what Sabah was going to get Sarawak would also get. Anyway, that seems to be the perception held by the Sarawak legislators when they voted without dissent the motion “to welcome the decision in principle of the British and Malayan Governments to establish Malaysia on Aug 31, 1963 on the understanding that the special interests of Sarawak would be safeguarded”.
So there you are. The Sarawakians who are constantly complaining about perennial shortage of funds for their work among the poor, the underprivileged and the disabled, may like to call on the ministers in charge of welfare services to enquire what has happened to this arrangement now.
There shouldn’t be any problems with funding of welfare services in both Sarawak and Sabah if the arrangement has been observed all this while for the past fifty years. Considering the large number of religious institutions funded by the federal funds of which we – whatever other religious affiliations we belong to – are also stake holders, the amount due to Sabah and Sarawak must be enormous! I may be wrong there.
Good luck, anyway.
I realise that the religious freedom enshrined in the Malaysian Constitution has been the subject of controversy and the question of the right to call God by a certain name has been disputed, I wish to circumvent this controversy by wishing that the final court of appeal may find time soon to decide what name Malaysians can write or say as the name of their common God in Bahasa Malaysia.
It’s a strange country this. While religious freedom is clearly written in the law as intended by the founding fathers of Malaysia, there is no freedom on the part of certain Malaysians to call God by His real name, until the man-made Malaysian judiciary tells us what to do.
Comments can reach the writer via [email protected].