SARAWAK Barisan Nasional leaders have dismissed outright the promises of Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Lim Kit Siang at the opposition coalition’s first major ceramah in Kuching on Sunday.

Deputy Chief Minister James Masing led the charge, trashing Dr Mahathir’s promise to revisit the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) and to renegotiate the terms that had allegedly been violated to the “dissatisfaction”of the people of Sabah and Sarawak.

“I’m surprised Dr Mahathir said that,” said Masing, who leads Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS), the second largest party in the state ruling coalition.

“I do not think he is sincere.

“In his 22 years as prime minister, he never bothered to touch on the subject,” Masing claimed.“He refused to talk to us about it.”

The country’s fourth prime minister, Dr Mahathir’s tenure from 1981 to 2003 makes him the longest serving prime minister.

“When he was in power, he didn’t want to review the MA63. Only now, when he wants us (Sarawak and Sabah) to vote for PH, he says he will do it.

“(That’s why) I don’t think Mahathir meant what he said. I don’t think there is an element of sincerity on the part on Mahathir.”

Masing said the promise was “a political gimmick to entice Sarawak people to vote for PH”.

On the other hand, he said, the state has had some progress with Prime Minister Najib Razak in having its grouses addressed.

“There are discussions to recover back the state’s powers under MA63 that had been eroded over the years.

“The meetings are still ongoing.”

While admitting that these things took time, Masing said the meetings were in themselves a “very positive response from the federal government”.

On the larger than expected turnout at the Sunday night ceramah in Taman BDC in Kuching, which was 2,000 or 10,000, depending on one’s news sources, Masing said people went because they were curious to “how old he (Dr Mahathir) is”.

Sarawak United Peoples’ Party (SUPP) youth chief Tan Kai said Dr Mahathir could have easily repealed the Petroleum Development Act 1974, one of the major thorns in state-federal relations, if he had wanted to.

“He had a two-thirds majority in all the 22 years. If he had thought that it was not fair to Sarawak all the time, he could have easily repealed the law,” Tan said brushing aside Dr Mahathir’s claim he did not draft the law which Sarawak and Sabah said was used by the federal government to plunder the two’s states most important natural resources – oil and gas.

Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, meanwhile, alleged that de facto PKR leader Anwar Ibrahim had already failed to live up to his promise to build 31 schools in the state when he was the education minister.

In response, DAP told the BN leaders to blame the component parties  of Sarawak BN “for being quiet and not voicing out” their grouses so as to protect the state’s interests when Dr Mahathir was the head of the coalition and the prime minister.

Why didn’t they, when they had representatives in Dr Mahathir’s cabinet, highlight or try to have the laws that went against the interests of Sarawak repealed, said Kelvin Yii, special assistant to PH and DAP Sarawak chief Chong Chieng Jen.

They said BN leaders were trying to put the blame on Dr Mahathir because he was now the opposition.

“The reality is that in 1974, the act granting the federal government rights to 95% of our oil was drafted and approved without any objection from SUPP or BN Sarawak,” Yii said. – September 26, 2017.