ON July 13, 1976, 22 MPs from Sarawak and 11 from Sabah gave Barisan Nasional the two-thirds majority it needed to relegate the two East Malaysian polities to states in the federation.

The majority needed to amend the constitution then was 103 votes in the 154-member Dewan Rakyat.

BN then was confined to Peninsular Malaysia and only had 97 MPs. The 33 votes from Bornean political parties gave BN the mandate to alter the constitution and make Sabah and Sarawak two of 13 states in the federation. Had they not voted, BN’s constitutional amendment would have failed.

The common excuse given by today’s Borneo politicians is that its senior lawmakers did not know better in 1976 and fell prey to the political maneuverings of the Malayans.

But that excuse is no longer valid today, as Borneo lawmakers have mastered the intricacies of the federal constitution.

They are so adept with parliamentary processes that they were able to force the House to vote on former deputy speaker Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar’s (Santubong-GPS) motion to refer the Article 1(2) amendment to a select committee after the second reading.

Not happy with a mere voice vote, which they lost, they even called for division voting so that the motion’s supporters would be individually recorded in the Parliament Hansard.

But when they were called upon to correct the wrongs of 1976 by voting on the Article 1(2) amendment, all the Gabungan Parti Sarawak MPs and two from Sabah decided to abstain.

They knew they would look bad if they opposed the amendment. At the same time, they also did not want to see it succeed.

So, in the end, they chose to wimpishly abstain, along with BN and PAS whose interest is in seeing anything Pakatan do fail.

While MPs are within their rights to abstain from voting on the amendment, this act effectively killed the amendment as what Pakatan needed was not a mere simple majority but 148 votes. The current government only commands 139 seats.

With the aid of several Sabah independents, Pakatan had 138 despite five absentees.

In the aftermath of this episode, the abstaining Borneo representatives will return to Sabah and Sarawak next week. 

They will tell their constituents that they did not reject the bill but tried hard to refer one of the simplest yet most fundamental amendment to a select committee. 

They will tell Sabahans and Sarawakians that they did not fall for Malayan politicians’ false promises.

But they will leave out the part that they stood on the sidelines as Sabah and Sarawak remain status quo.

Nobody can tell whether Pakatan will honour its promise to amend other parts of the constitution so that Sabah and Sarawak will get what is due to them.

No one can predict when the next Article 1(2) amendment will be tabled again.

But many will remember that when Sabah and Sarawak had the chance to restore their positions in the federal constitution, some of these lawmakers folded their arms and watched the amendment fail.

Just like in 1976, MPs form East Malaysia relegated the statuses of Sabah and Sarawak. Not Pakatan. – April 10, 2019.

* Chan is a journalist with The Malaysian Insight. You can follow him on Twitter.E-mail: [email protected]