THE cabinet has approved the establishment of a committee to “draw up a plan on how to move forward” on Sarawak and Sabah’s rights dispute, Entrepreneurial Development and Cooperative Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said today. 

Wan Junaidi said the cabinet at its meeting yesterday had agreed to the proposals in the working paper by Sabah and Sarawak Affairs Minister Maximus Ongkili on the steps needed to resolve the remaining disputes.

The talks came to an abrupt end when the Pakatan Harapan government collapsed in February. 

The PH government’s special cabinet committee of the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63), chaired by former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, had resolved 17 of the 21 disputes that had been forwarded to it. 

However, thorny key issues on oil royalty, cash payments for petroleum, oil minerals and oil fields and the illegal alteration of the state’s boundary by two federal laws – the Territorial Sea Act 2012, and the Continental Shelf Act 1966, remain unsolved. 

Wan Junaidi said one of the committee’s tasks was to delve deep into the recommendations of the Cobbold Commission, the 1963 Inter-governmental Committee report and the MA63 to fully understand the spirit of the Borneo states in agreeing to help form Malaysia. 

“The ministry had been ordered by the cabinet to undertake a study on the way forward.

“The committee will conduct an in-depth and systematic study of all claims of Sabah and Sarawak,” Wan Junaidi, who is also the Santubong MP, said to reporters after disbursing minor rural projects grants to his constituents at his service centre in Kuching this afternoon. 

He was asked why the state and federal governments had suddenly slowed down on the proposal to amend Article 1(2) of the federal constitution. 

The amendment was to restore the status of Sabah and Sarawak according to the original wording of the MA63.

When the PH government tabled the amendment in April last year, it was defeated when only 138 MPs supported the bill, 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority required in the 222-seat parliament.

Gabungan Parti Sarawak MPs abstained in the voting to register their disapproval in the wording of the amendment. 

PH promised to retable the bill before they lost power. 

Wan Junaidi said the focus was no longer on the amendment but to resolve disputes that deprived the states of its rights to more money, particularly over its oil and gas resources.

“A lot of people say the amendment to Article 1(2) will make us equal partners. Is that true? 

“You can amendment the constitution, you can change your name. Will that make you equal partners? Will that make the state rich?” he asked. – September 10, 2020.