Fong, Gerawat in MA63 legal team

5

KUCHING: State Legal Counsel Datuk JC Fong, State Legislative Assembly (DUN) deputy speaker Datuk Gerawat Gala and lawyers from the State Attorney General Chambers will form Sarawak’s legal team that will be heading to London to study the state’s rights under the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63).

A reliable source told The Borneo Post that the legal team would be in London on July 16 to conduct the study for between four and five days. Chief Minister Datuk Amar Abang Johari Tun Openg had revealed on Saturday that Sarawak would send a team of lawyers to London to search for and study any references related to the state’s rights.

According to him, the team would be led by Law, Federal-State Relations and Project Monitoring assistant minister Sharifah Hasidah Sayeed Aman Ghazali.

“Indeed, we will continue with Tok Nan’s (former Chief Minister Tan Sri Adenan Satem) efforts to retrieve our rights as embodied in the Malaysia Agreement. That’s why we are sending Sharifah Hasidah and a legal team to London to look for and get the references,” he said.

“This agreement is not simply an agreement; we want to get the facts right because if we want to make a claim, we must do our homework, otherwise we are just shooting at the target without hitting it,” he said.

Last month, Hasidah said the state government is in the process of studying and doing research on the Territorial Sea Act 2012 (TSA 2012) which had been passed in Parliament and had infringed the state’s rights under MA63.

“I’m in the process of studying the various laws, including the Territorial Sea Act 2012 (TSA 2012) that have been passed in Parliament and that have been found to infringe our rights (under MA63), which will be submitted to the federal government,” she told The Borneo Post then.

She also disclosed that she would be making a research trip overseas on Territorial Sea Act 2012 (TSA 2012) after Hari Raya.

On June 22, 2012, Sarawak and Sabah lost their sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the area of the Continental Shelf, consisting of the seabed and its subsoil beneath the high seas contiguous to the territorial waters of the Borneo states when TSA 2012 came into effect, limiting the jurisdictions of both states to three nautical miles (5.5 km) from the coastline.

With the reduced breadth limits of its territorial waters, the state’s rights to fisheries, marine and mineral resources, tourism sites in marine areas and so forth are now confined to only three nautical miles (5.56 km) from its coastline.

A motion was tabled by Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Datuk Amar Dr James Masing on Dec 8, 2015 calling for a review of all legislations that affect the state’s rights to its natural resources and the exercise of powers and functions in relation thereto, under the Federal Constitution, within its boundaries and upon such review, to amend or repeal such legislation. The motion received an all-round aye from the august House.