SARAWAK Premier Abang Johari Openg said political scientist Wong Chin Huat was wrong in his assertion there was a time limit for Sarawak and Sabah’s demand for a 35%, or one-third, of parliamentary seats and that it had expired.

“Not correct,” he told reporters in Kuching today when asked about the assertion in one of Chin Huat’s opinion pieces where he stated that the proportion was protected for only seven years after Malaysia Day.

Chin Huat said the quarter proportion had expired after September 16, 1970.

When Malaysia was formed in 1963, Sarawak, Sabah and Singapore combined were given 55 seats in the then 159-seat federal parliament, or a 34.6% representation, as a check and balance mechanism to prevent any unilateral moves by Malaya to amend the federal constitution that would disadvantage the three states.

After Singapore left Malaysia in 1965, Sarawak and Sabah by right should have inherited Singapore’s 15 seats to retain the veto bloc against Malaya but they didn’t and their representation was reduced to 25.16%.

The seats went to Malaya leading to the ongoing demand by the Borneo states which Abang Johari had described as addressing the imbalance.

Chin Huat, who currently leads the clusters on the electoral system and constituency delimitation in the government’s Electoral Reform Committee (ERC), also stated the continued adherence after 1970 was driven by political goodwill, not by legal obligation.

Abang Johari said it was “clearly stated” in the Inter-Governmental Committee (IGC) Report that the rights and interests of Sabah, then known as North Borneo, Sarawak and Singapore “must be protected”.

The premier said the protection assurance was “stated explicitly” not only in parliamentary representation but also in education and language.

Last night in ceremonies to mark Malaysia Day in the industrial town of Bintulu, Abang Johari said Sarawak and Sabah have to ensure that their rights and privileges are always protected and safeguarded in Parliament and that the wants of some federal leaders are not imposed or “lorded over us to our detriment and loss”.

He said some of the two Borneo territories’ rights have been eroded in the last 59 years because “we did not have the power to effectively object in parliament to laws that were either unintentionally or purposely enacted to infringe our rights”.

“We only want our rights back, no more no less.”

As if to responds to Chin Huat’s question on why Sarawak and Sabah want a third of the seats when voters in the two territories constitute only one-sixth of the nation’s total, Abang Johari in his address said the creation of a constituency “is not purely based on the size of population according to the Westminster system that we copied from the UK”.

He said even in the UK, parliamentary representation is not sorely based on population but also on the size of a particular seat.

“Should a seat be considered based only on population, then remote places with scattered populations like Ulu Baram, Belaga and Ulu Rajang will not merit representation, which is not the case as we know it.”

The one area where Abang Jphari and Chin Huat agreed on is that the representation in parliament was not explicitly expressed in the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63).

“IGC has given assurance that the interests of these territories are to be protected at all times.” – September 17, 2022.