UMNO deputy president Mohamad Hasan’s proposal for a new Malaysia Agreement is typical of the “general attitude” peninsular Malay political elites have towards the historic agreement that formed the Federation of Malaysia in 1963, Sarawak and Sabah analysts said.

It also shows the peninsula’s insensitivity towards the Borneo states’ demands for compliance with the agreement, dubbed MA63, given the rights of Sabah and Sarawak have been watered down over the years.

“Tok Mat is not the only one,” University of Tasmania’s Kuching-born Asian expert, James Chin, told The Malaysian Insight.

“The Malay political elites in Malaya have no real understanding of the emotions of people in Sabah and Sarawak have attached to MA63.

“Their attitude is that once you enter the federation (of Malaysia), you (Sabah and Sarawak) have to live by the rules of the federation.

“What is important to them (on the peninsula) is that Sabah and Sarawak have to share everything,” Chin said, referring to long-standing debates over oil and natural gas resources in Sarawak and Sabah that have generated billions in revenue for federal coffers.

However, Sabah and Sarawak have barely seen any of this funding returned to them for their development.

Sabah is Malaysia’s poorest state.

Meanwhile Sarawak, has attempted to take matters into its own hands by setting up its own state petroleum company, Petroleum Sarawak Bhd (Petros), to play a bigger role in its own oil and gas resources through co-operation with national oil company Petronas.

Since 2019, Sarawak has also imposed a 5% sales tax on petroleum products to boost its own revenue.

Chin said the peninsular Malay leaders “don’t want to talk about not keeping the promises (of the MA63) or issues like the decentralisation of federal powers.

“None of these things are important to them.”

Mohamad, who is also Barisan Nasional deputy chairman and known as Tok Mat, said earlier this month that a new Malaysia agreement was needed to move forward from the current stalemate over unfulfilled promises enshrined in the MA63.

These include revenue sharing and other rights which Sabah and Sarawak say have been watered down, including the placing of more Sarawak and Sabah folk in the state’s civil service instead of posting people from the peninsula in key civil service positions.

Mohamad said his proposal for a new agreement was because the original MA63 was crafted in a different time and context, whereas Malaysia has since moved on.

He made this suggestion when launching the Sabah BN convention and immediately drew criticism from local leaders.

Chin said such remarks proved that peninsular leaders do not understand the level of mistrust people in the Borneo territories have towards the federal government.

“It is very high. In Sabah, for example, the mistrust is fuelled by the issue of illegal immigrants.

“The general attitude of the people of Sabah and Sarawak is that if you can’t keep to the first agreement, there is no way you can keep to the new one.”

He was referring to Sabah’s high population of undocumented people and stateless foreigners, including their children.

A think-tank in 2020 found that 1.2 million of Sabah’s 3.9 million population are foreigners.

The illegal immigration problem has not been effectively handled, and add to Sabah folk anger over the earlier “Project IC” blamed on the federal government during the 1990s, which involved the systematic granting of citizenship to immigrants, allegedly to change the state’s demographic and make it favourable to the ruling party during elections.

Sarawak political analyst, Jayum Jawan, who is attached to Universiti Putra Malaysia, agreed with Chin’s view about the trust deficit between Sabah and Sarawak and the peninsula.

The Academy of Sciences Fellow said Mohamad’s suggestion can aggravate the deficit.

“The relationship between Sabah and Sarawak and the peninsula have never had enough firm ground nor has it been sincere and transparent.

“For several decades, Sabah and Sarawak leaders have always been afraid to call out federal leaders when deviations from the terms of the MA63 happen, because they were in a weak position.”

Jayum said BN, which had governed Malaysia for six decades until 2018, had replaced state leaders they viewed as difficult and replaced them with those that are “federal-friendly”.

The general election in 2018 thus caused “a little mayhem” to federal political leaders when Sabah was won by the opposition.

Distrust and political instability has continued, with party-hopping since 2020 causing changes in government at federal and state level in Sabah, and is one of the reasons why East Malaysian states are speaking up more aggressively now.

“It has made the long-suppressed states of Sabah and Sarawak more aggressive. The many issues of imbalance in many aspects, especially in development, monetary allocation and revenue sharing, are brought into question.

“The rise in state and regional demands are not surprising,” Jayum added.

Lee Kuok Tiung, an assistant professor at the University of Sabah Malaysia, said Mohamad’s proposal reflected an “imperialism mentality”, whereby federal leaders only think about taking Sabah and Sarawak resources only for developing the peninsula.

“It’s typical of how the peninsula views Sabah and Sarawak,” Lee said.

Political analyst Awang Azman Awang Pawi, from Universiti Malaya, said the country lacked discourse about Sabah and Sarawak’s rights, which led to Mohamad’s remarks.

“What’s missing from Malaysia’s governance is policy discourse. We need to accept different perspectives, ideas and differences. Malaysia is not linear.

“There are many perspectives and we must be willing to explore everything for the sake of making this country better,” Azman said. – July 18, 2022.