By Atama Katama, Angie Chin, and Remy Majangkim
Kopitiam, KOTA KINABALU:. Raining with Teh Tarik, the smell of rain is in the air.
Remy Majangkim: (sipping his tea) Within three days, the minister said two completely different things.
On May 3, Mustapha Sakmud tells us he might raise the special grant—which is nothing but a political gift—if the economy allows.
Then, on May 5, he suddenly discovers that the 40% is a “constitutional right, not a form of goodwill”.
Atama Katama: (slams the table lightly)
Exactly—two statements, same man, same ministry. The first says maybe; the second says it’s a right. Which am I supposed to believe? You don’t negotiate a right.
You don’t make a right conditional on the “economic situation”. Yet Mustapha stands there and boasts that all the data for 2007 to 2025 has already been exchanged.
The numbers are on the table. The only thing missing is payment.
Angie Chin: (stirs her tea, eyes fixed on Remy)
So now the federal government is trying to replace our constitutional 40% with a “package”: a few hundred million in special grants, a few billion in federal development funds, maybe some interim payments here and there—call it RM17 billion for 2026, dress it up, and hope Sabahans don’t notice.
But that’s not our 40%. Our 40% was never a gift—it is the return of our own money.
So why is Putrajaya still dragging its feet?
Remy Majangkim: (reading from his phone)
And listen to this – Mustapha also bragged about a new “MA63 Implementation Status Dashboard”. Phase 1 is already running;
Phase 2 is under development. Data integration, real-time information, the whole digital theatre.
Angie Chin: (Hehehe laughs bitterly)
Sakmud, such a dashboard – washing federal dirty laundry. They want us to stare at a screen showing
“13 out of 29 issues resolved” while the 40% cash sits in Putrajaya.
A dashboard is not payment. It is a distraction.
They can keep their dashboard. Give us the money.
Atama Katama: (nods)
And that brings us to the speaker’s wall.
The Speaker’s Wall: Rejecting Private Bills with a Wave of the Hand
Remy Majangkim: (leans back)
Exactly.
The Speaker, Datuk Seri Kadzim Yahya, refused to allow Kapayan assemblyman Chin Tek Ming to move a simple private member’s bill on the 40% claim.
Chin’s motion didn’t ask for anything new; it asked for three things: a calculation of Sabah’s 40% for 2022–2025, full disclosure to the State Assembly, and a clear implementation timeline.
Atama Katama: (nods slowly)
Chin stressed that the motion was separate from the ongoing Sabah Law Society legal challenge and did not fall under sub judice restrictions. Yet the Speaker kept insisting that government business must come first and that “premature” disclosure could harm negotiations.
Angie Chin: (sarcastically)
Oh yes—the “negotiations”, yeah right! The same negotiations that have been running for decades that gave us special grants of a few million when a constitutional right demands billions.
The speaker acts as if discussing the terms of our own money would collapse the entire negotiation process. Meanwhile, the minister himself admits the data is already fully exchanged and verified. So where’s the secrecy?
Atama Katama: (leaning forward, voice low but fierce)
And this is where my character arc sharpens, Remy. Because I have stopped believing that this is just incompetence or bureaucratic delay. No – the speaker, the minister, the whole federal apparatus – they are not confused. They are executing a class project.
They are the bureaucrat comprador bourgeoisie – the local elite who serve Kuala Lumpur’s capital accumulation while pretending to defend Sabah.
.They block private bills not because of procedure, but because they fear that once we know our true revenue, we will demand not just 40% – but full control over our resources, our economy, and our future. Exposing them is not optional. It is the first step to liberation.
(Angie and Remy stare at him for a beat. Then Remy nods slowly.)
Remy Majangkim: (steeples his fingers)
Yabah! That’s the trick, Atama. If the data is already shared, there is no reason for confidentiality. Unless the federal government simply refuses to let Sabahans know the true extent of what we are owed.
By blocking the motion, the Speaker protects Putrajaya, not Sabah. That is why we need three activists in this room—to say the things that the Assembly won’t let us say on the floor.
Atama Katama: (pulls out a folded piece of paper)
Let me remind everyone of the recent history – because the federal government loves to pretend that this fight started yesterday. Listen carefully:
September 2020: Following the Sabah state election, the Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) government is formed. Masidi Manjun is appointed Finance Minister II, and Tengku Zafrul is the federal finance minister.
December 7, 2021: The Commercial Collaboration Agreement (CCA) is signed. While focused on oil and gas participation through SMJ Energy, it builds the political rapport needed for broader financial negotiations.
April 14, 2022: The federal and Sabah governments announce an interim special grant agreement. The annual payment is hiked from RM26.7 million to RM125.6 million for 2022.
June 9, 2022: The Sabah Law Society (SLS) files for judicial review. They argue the 2022 agreement is unconstitutional because it attempts to settle the claim without a proper review of the “Lost Years” (1974–2021).
November 11, 2022: The High Court grants SLS leave (permission) to proceed with the judicial review, despite federal opposition.
That timeline – from the GRS government to the court case – shows one thing clearly: The federal government has known about the 40% claim for years.
They used interim agreements and friendly state administrations to delay. And only when the Sabah Law Society forced the courts did they begin to move – reluctantly, inch by inch. Now they want us to be grateful for a dashboard and talk of “phased implementation”. No. The timeline is the evidence of bad faith.
Angie Chin: (low whistle and arm cross)
So the interim grant of RM125.6 million in 2022 – that was the carrot. While the real 40% – which should have been billions – stayed in Putrajaya.
Remy Majangkim: (grimly)
And the High Court eventually ruled in our favour in October 2025. But they still haven’t paid. That’s why we focus on 2022–2025 – the years after that sham interim grant, the years of e-invoicing, and the years of maximum federal collection.
The 2022–2025 Window: Not Sub Judice, Not Negotiable
Atama Katama: (puts away the paper, pulls out a tattered notebook)
Exactly. So let’s refocus on the only question that cannot be delayed: What about 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025? The High Court ruling of 17 October 2025 dealt primarily with 1974 to 2021, and the appeal only concerns the “lost years”.
Angie Chin: (raises an eyebrow)
And the Court of Appeal’s deferment relates only to retrospective claims for the past. For current years, the minister has already acknowledged that data from 2007 to 2025 has been “successfully carried out”.
That means the 2022–2025 revenue figures are verified. They are public. And they are not under any active court restriction.
Remy Majangkim: (excitedly)
Which means there is zero reason for Putrajaya to withhold payment for those four years. Zero. When Finance Minister Masidi Manjun wrote to the federal government on 10 April 2026, demanding immediate payment of RM3.019 billion for 2025 alone, he was relying on uncontested data—income tax and customs figures that are in the public domain. Masidi himself stated, “These are not figures in dispute—they are published statistics.”
Atama Katama: (scribbling notes)
That’s the key phrase: “not in dispute”. If they are not in dispute, then there is no need for endless negotiation. The 40% is not a negotiation; it is a formula. You take the revenue collected from Sabah, you multiply by 0.4, and you transfer the funds. That should happen quarterly—or better yet, in real time, now that we have e‑invoicing.
Angie Chin: (folding her arms)
And yet Mustapha talks of “phased implementation”—as if paying us our own money is some kind of logistical feat. If the federal government can roll out e‑invoicing for every business in the country, it can certainly transfer a calculated percentage to Sabah’s treasury.
The “Sub Judice” Mirage
Remy Majangkim: (waves his hand dismissively)
Let’s kill this “sub judice” ghost once and for all. The Federal Government’s appeal, filed on 14 November 2025, targets only the grounds of judgement for the 1974–2021 period—not the core right itself.
And as Chin Tek Ming correctly pointed out, the Speaker’s rejection of his motion cannot be justified by any court order because no court has restricted discussion of the 2022‑2025 entitlement.
Atama Katama: (nods vigorously)
Exactly. A subject becomes sub judice only when there is a pending court proceeding covering that specific issue. Here, the only pending matter concerns methodologies for calculating past “lost years” and certain legal nuances—not the raw revenue data for 2022‑2025. So every time a federal official says, “Let’s wait for the court,” they are deliberately misleading the people.
Angie Chin: (slams her palm on the table)
That’s the strategy: blur the lines between past, present, and future; wrap everything in a fog of ongoing negotiations; and then claim that even asking for current revenue data is “premature” or “sub judice”. It’s a lie, and they know it. That’s why we keep talking.
Moving Forward: One Simple Demand
Remy Majangkim: (leaning forward)
Alright—let’s cut through the noise. We have three clear facts:
The 40% entitlement is a constitutional right, not a grant.
The federal government has already exchanged and verified all revenue data from 2007 to 2025.
The 2022‑2025 figures are public, uncontested, and not subject to any pending appeal.
Therefore, our demand is singular: pay Sabah its 40% of federal revenue derived from the state for 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 – immediately, in full, without condition.
Atama Katama: (fist on the table)
Not incremental “interim payments”. Not a restructured “special grant”. Not further “negotiations” on a formula that is already spelt out in the Constitution. Payment. Now.
Angie Chin: (reaches out and places her hand on both their shoulders)
And if the Speaker refuses to allow a private bill on this matter, we take the debate outside the august House—to the media, to the streets, to every village. Because the 40% is not a secret negotiation between Putrajaya technocrats. It is the lifeblood of Sabahans who have been short‑changed for half a century.
Remy Majangkim: (smiles thinly)
And that, my friends, is why we are three activists talking. While the minister double‑speaks and the speaker raises procedural walls, we speak the one language that cannot be silenced: truth backed by law, data, and the will of the people.
The rain outside the kopitiam has stopped.
A song, ‘Die with a smile’, was in mind – in our situation, it is a twist of a knife with a smile. Cheerio, everyone, till we meet again.
