KUCHING: Referring to a published report by news portal Freemalaysiatoday on 29th September 2018 where PM Tun Dr Mahathir claimed during a dinner for Malaysians in New York that the Malaysia Agreement (MA63) is no bar to secession but that the people of Sarawak and Sabah do not want independence, Lina Soo, president of State Reform Party Sarawak (STAR) believes that the people of Sarawak and Sabah are now politically matured and must exercise their right to be masters of their own destiny, said a press release yesterday.
Soo says that Mahathir has given the green light in saying that Sarawak and Sabah are not prevented from seeking independence by the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63), but declared that what the people of Sarawak and Sabah want is only autonomy.
By Mahathir’s admission, this literally means that the federal government has no power or authority to stop the Sarawak and Sabah people to seek independence if they wish to, but claims that the Sarawak and Sabah governments have only asked for autonomy in the sharing of power between the Federal and the State in the administration of the Federation.
If indeed what Mahathir says is true, Soo calls for the federal government to prove it through democratic process by giving the people of Sarawak and Sabah a referendum to let the people choose between autonomy and independence. If indeed being in the Federation had been beneficial to the people of Sarawak and Sabah and the two States still need federal government rule, there is nothing to fear as the people would vote to stay. This would settle the contentious matter of Sarawak and Sabah’s self-determination for autonomy or independence, as had been done for Scotland by the British government in a fair, open and democratic manner.
Soo says that independence is an inalienable right through the established legal doctrine of self-determination. The Sarawak and Sabah governments could have followed Singapore in 1965 to exit, but both States were unprepared and had not reached the level of political maturity then.
But today, after 55 years’ continuous sufferings in the non-compliance and multiple breaches of MA63, coupled with unconstitutional manipulation and gross mismanagement resulting in huge foreign debt and endemic corruption, the people of Sarawak and Sabah can no longer carry this burden piling up on them and their future generations to come.
Soo believes that as the people of a territory become politically matured, they will seek to chart their own destiny and aspire to self-determination, and the people of Sarawak and Sabah are today, more than ready to meet the challenges ahead.
With abundant oil and gas wealth, and blessed with fertile land and plentiful natural resources, the expectation of economic success and survival is assured, says Soo with confidence through the press release.
Furthermore, Soo cites Article 8 of the Nine Cardinal Principles of Sarawak: that the goal of self-government shall always be kept in mind, that the people of Sarawak shall be entrusted in due course with the governance of themselves, and that continuous efforts shall be made to hasten the reaching of this goal by educating them in the obligations, the responsibilities and the privileges of citizenship.
The Nine Cardinal Principles which is the preamble to the Sarawak Constitution still holds true today, and charts the destiny of Sarawak for a better political, social and economic future, concludes Soo through the statement.
