PUTRAJAYA should hold a referendum to let the people of Sabah and Sarawak choose between autonomy or independence from the peninsula, said State Reform Party Sarawak president Lina Soo.

She was referring to a report in Free Malaysia Today on Saturday, which quoted Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad as saying he believes Sabahans and Sarawakians would not choose to secede, and that there are no provisions in the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) that forbid them from doing so.

“The people of Sarawak and Sabah are now politically mature and must exercise their right to be masters of their own destiny,” Soo told The Malaysian Insight.

“Dr Mahathir has given the green light, saying Sarawak and Sabah are not prevented from seeking independence by MA63.

“By Dr Mahathir’s admission, this literally means that the federal government has no power or authority to stop the people of Sarawak and Sabah from seeking independence if they wish to do so.”

Soo, who also chairs state human rights group Sarawak Association for Peoples’ Aspiration, said the federal government has “nothing to fear, as the people would vote to stay” if indeed the years of being in the federation have been beneficial to Sarawak and Sabah folk.

“The Sarawak and Sabah governments could have followed Singapore in 1965 and exited, but both states were unprepared and had not reached political maturity then.

“But today, after 55 years of continuously suffering non-compliance with and breaches of MA63, coupled with unconstitutional manipulation and gross mismanagement, resulting in a huge foreign debt and endemic corruption, the people of Sarawak and Sabah can no longer carry this burden piling up on them and their future generations.”

She said she believes that as the people of a territory become politically mature, they will seek to chart their own destiny and aspire to self-determination, and that the people of Sarawak and Sabah are, today, more than ready to meet the challenges ahead.

“With abundant oil and gas wealth, and blessed with fertile land and plentiful natural resources, the expectation of economic success and survival is assured.”

She said Article 8 of the Nine Cardinal Principles of the rule of the English Rajah – the preamble of Sarawak’s 1941 constitution – still holds true today, whereby “the goal of self-government shall always be kept in mind, that the people of Sarawak shall be entrusted in due course with the governance of themselves, and that continuous efforts shall be made to hasten the reaching of this goal by educating them in the obligations, the responsibilities and the privileges of citizenship”.

The Nine Cardinal Principles, an edict by the last White Rajah Charles Vyner Brooke, were later adopted in the Report of the Commission of Enquiry, North Borneo and Sarawak, 1962. – October 1, 2018.