GABUNGAN Parti Sarawak MPs did not backtrack from supporting Putrajaya’s constitutional amendment bill last week despite originally agreeing to it, said the state ruling coalition’s chief whip Fadillah Yusof.

The Petra Jaya MP said they never wavered in their stand on the constitutional amendment bill that was defeated last week.

“We have been consistent in our stand and we have made that very clear,” Fadillah said in reaction to a The Malaysian Insight report yesterday.

The report stated that GPS backtracked and abstained from voting despite Putrajaya agreeing to its request to have specific words included to recognise the two states as Borneo entities.

A day before the amendment’s tabling and second reading on April 9, Fadillah sent a letter to Dewan Rakyat Speaker Mohamad Ariff Mohd Yusof to alter the wording.

In the April 8 letter sighted by The Malaysian Insight, GPS requested that in the amendment to Article 1(2), the term “Borneo states” must be inserted when referring to Sabah and Sarawak, and requested that it be allowed to table this change in the committee stage of the bill.

The committee stage would have come after voting on the second reading but the amendment was never passed after Pakatan Harapan failed to secure the two-thirds majority or 148 MPs needed to push through the constitutional amendment.

Only 138 MPs voted “aye” while 59 MPs from BN, PAS and GPS abstained. There were no rejections.

The bill, even though it reverted to its original 1963 wording for the second reading, did not show any of the GPS key demand.

Fadillah said he and his GPS colleagues are aware that they will face “a big political backlash from those who may not understand the issue or do not understand our passion and resolve for Sarawak rights”.

He added that they are not going to compromise when it comes to restoring Sarawak and Sabah’s rights and protecting the two states’ joint interests to their fullest.

“No one is more passionate about this than GPS.”

Fadillah made clear that Sarawak Chief Minister Abang Johari Openg did give his agreement, in principle, to the amendment.

“But the keyword is principle. The devil is in the details.

“We are not asking for more than we are entitled to in the MA63 but merely to strengthen and resolve any possible loophole to protect our interests.

“The federal constitution was drafted more than half a century ago. Things have changed since then and you cannot expect it to be a perfect document without loopholes.”

Listing the “many grey areas” which Sarawak had encountered in the constitution, Fadillah said that was why Sarawak had sought to amend the draft bill to account for the weaknesses.

“We abstained from voting from the bill. We did not reject the bill.

“We abstained because while we want the bill to be passed, we feel that it can be improved,” he said.

He said the failure of the bill to be passed “is not the end of story or end of the line”. – April 18, 2019.