KUCHING: Will Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak annul the constitutional amendment made in 1976 in order to restore the status of Sarawak and Sabah as “one of the three partners in Malaysia”?
This question was posed yesterday by Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng, who described the amendment as downgrading the status of Sarawak and Sabah to “one of the 13 states”.
“Before 1976, Sarawak and Sabah were (jointly) one of the three partners in Malaysia, not one of the 13 states in Malaysia. When (Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri) Adenan Satem talks about Sarawak’s autonomy, is he ready to go back to the pre-1976 situation?
“This is why we are asking Najib to declare he will do the constitutional amendment to restore the status of Sarawak and Sabah,” he told reporters after a walkabout with DAP candidate for Batu Kitang, Abdul Aziz Isa, in Mile 10 here.
Lim, who is also national DAP secretary-general, asserted that the federal government must first abolish the 1976 constitutional amendment to restore the rights of the East Malaysian states.
He said Adenan should work on restoring the autonomous rights of Sarawak as one of the three partners in Malaysia rather than demonstrating the state’s immigration power by banning opposition leaders from entering the state.
“They keep saying this is Sarawak’s special right, but the real issue is the Federal Constitution. You are not respected by the Federal Constitution as one of the three.
“We fully support the amendment to restore the rights of Sarawak and Sabah. What is happening is that Sarawak and Sabah have been downgraded.”
He wondered why Sarawakians had been asked to support Najib and have a Chinese deputy chief minister when the state administration failed to defend the rights of Sarawak.
On the Goods and Services Tax (GST), he said BN MPs from Sarawak voted for GST in Parliament, and they should explain to the people why GST was so important.
“They (BN ministers) said GST would bring down the prices of some goods, but prices of all goods went up. They said GST would save the people, but it saved only Najib.
“Only rich countries have GST, and countries that are not rich but have GST are suffering. Look at Greece. It went bankrupt because of GST and because their workers are not rich enough.”
According to Wikipedia, among the causes of the government-debt crisis in Greece are low GDP growth rates, huge fiscal imbalances from 2004-2009, and rising government-debt level.
Other factors that triggered the Greek government-debt crisis are the turmoil of the Great Recession, structural weaknesses in the Greek economy, and a sudden crisis in confidence among leaders.
By June last year, Greece became the first developed country to fail making an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan repayment. At that time, Greece had debts of Euro 323 billion.
In March this year, the Ministry of Finance disclosed that the sovereign debt level of Malaysia was RM630.5 billion, or 54.5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The Malaysian government’s self-imposed limit is 55 per cent of the GDP.