Daniel John Jambun, President Borneo’s Plight in Malaysia Foundation (BoPiMaFo )
KOTA KINABALU: For over six decades, the discourse surrounding Sabah’s position within the Federation of Malaysia has been trapped in a narrow, often weaponized lexicon. Whenever Sabahans voice their profound exhaustion over systemic marginalization, the reactive counter-narrative from Kuala Lumpur is almost always the same: an accusation of “secession” or sedition.
It is time to correct the premise of this debate. Sabah and Sarawak cannot “secede” from a federation that they co-created as equal sovereign partners. Secession implies a subordinate province breaking away from a mother country.
The Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) was not a domestic piece of legislation; it was a multilateral international treaty registered with the United Nations under Treaty Number 10760.
When the fundamental pillars of an international treaty are systematically violated over generations, the conversation shifts entirely.
We are not discussing secession. What we are witnessing is the tragic culmination of broken promises and shattered dreams—and legally, the material dissolution of the Federation of Malaysia by virtue of a fundamental breach of its founding covenant.
The Security Breach: The Erosion of Sovereignty and Franchise
The foundational bedrock of Sabah’s agreement to form Malaysia was the ironclad assurance of security and the preservation of its distinct demographic identity, as safeguarded by immigration autonomy. This was a core condition of the Inter-Governmental Committee (IGC) Report and the 20-Point Agreement.
This pillar was openly and catastrophically breached through the phenomenon historically documented as “Project IC.” The systematic issuance of citizenship documentation to foreign nationals, their subsequent inclusion in the electoral rolls, and their participation in the democratic process fundamentally altered the demographic and political landscape of Sabah.
From a standpoint of political sovereignty, this represents an existential breach.
When the federal apparatus—tasked with the ultimate responsibility of national security—presides over a process that dilutes the political franchise of Sabah’s indigenous and rightful populations, it abdicates its sovereign duty.
You cannot claim to uphold a federation while actively undermining the self-determination of one of its founding partners.
The Territorial Breach: The Seizure of the Continental Shelf
A nation’s sovereignty is defined by its boundaries. Prior to the formation of Malaysia, the borders of Sabah and Sarawak were clearly defined under the Queen’s Orders in Council 1954, which explicitly included the continental shelf and its underlying minerals.
These boundaries intrinsically and exclusively belonged to the Bornean states.
The federal government unilaterally breached this sacred boundary by enacting federal laws like the Petroleum Development Act 1974 (PDA74) and the Territorial Sea Act 2012 (TSA2012).
These acts effectively altered the maritime boundaries of Sabah and Sarawak without the mandatory consent of our state legislatures, stripping us of our natural resources and sovereign rights over our own seabed. Under international and constitutional law, taking land and sea boundaries that were never surrendered in 1963 is a severe, irreversible violation of the treaty.
The Political Breach: The Denial of the 35% Parliamentary Safeguard
The architects of MA63 were deliberate: they ensured that Peninsular Malaysia could never possess a two-thirds majority in Parliament on its own. This structural safeguard—mandating that Sabah, Sarawak, and Singapore collectively held more than one-third of parliamentary seats—was designed to protect the Bornean states from having their rights amended out of existence by a Malayan voting majority.
Following Singapore’s exit in 1965, those vacated seats should have been redistributed to Sabah and Sarawak to maintain that foundational veto power. Instead, Kuala Lumpur absorbed the political weight, allowing Peninsular Malaysia to claim more than 70% of parliamentary seats.
By failing to allocate the Bornean states their rightful 35% additional representation, the federal government shattered the legislative defense system promised to us, reducing our status from equal founding partners to politically dominated dependencies.
The Economic Breach: Colonial Extraction vs. Equal Partnership
The economic pillar of MA63 promised equal partnership and equitable economic development. The financial provisions embedded within Article 112C and the Tenth Schedule of the Federal Constitution—specifically the mandatory 40% net revenue entitlement—were designed to ensure that Sabah would remain financially autonomous and capable of sustaining its own progress.
The reality, however, has been an exercise in fiscal colonialism.
For decades, Sabah’s immense wealth in oil, gas, and natural resources has been aggressively extracted to fund the federal treasury and mega-infrastructure projects in Peninsular Malaysia. In return, Sabah has been chronically underfunded, consistently ranking at the absolute bottom of national poverty statistics.
The deprivation is not merely statistical; it is visceral. Decades after the formation of Malaysia, Sabahans still endure unsealed roads, unstable electricity grids, dry water taps, limited employment for our youth, poor health facilities, and dilapidated schools. The federal government’s prolonged failure to honor the 40% net revenue formula is not a mere accounting oversight; it is a profound material breach of the economic covenant that induced Sabah to sign MA63.
The Historical Mandate: Tunku Abdul Rahman and Lord Lansdowne
To silence those in Kuala Lumpur who constantly threaten Sabah and Sarawak with accusations of sedition when discussing our exit, we must look to the very architects of the Federation itself. Their historical declarations prove that Sabah and Sarawak possess a clear, undisputed right of withdrawal.
First, during the negotiation stages of MA63, there were calls to include a specific “exit clause” in the agreement and the Federal Constitution.
Lord Lansdowne, the Chairman of the Inter-Governmental Committee (IGC), famously responded that such a clause was entirely unnecessary. His reasoning was clear, logical, and legally binding on the spirit of the agreement:
Any State voluntarily entering a federation possesses an “intrinsic right” to secede at will.
Second, and perhaps most damning to the federal narrative, is the public statement made by the Father of Malaysia himself. On July 18, 1963—just weeks before the birth of the federation—the *Borneo Times* reported Tunku Abdul Rahman seriously announcing that *the territories entering Malaysia are free to leave the Federation if the new nation does not bring them any benefit.*
“Tengku Abdul Rahman serius mengumumkan bahawa wilayah-wilayah yang masuk Malaysia adalah bebas untuk keluar dari Persekutuan itu kiranya negara baru itu tidak mendatangkan apa-apa keuntungan kepada mereka.” (Borneo Times, 18th July 1963).
Tunku’s message was unambiguous: Malaysia was a partnership meant to bring prosperity, not a trap to enforce captivity.
Six decades later, we must ask the hard question: What benefit has this federation brought to Sabah when our resources are stripped, our borders compromised, and our people kept in systemic poverty?
Dissolution, Not Secession:
A New Reality
In international law, the doctrine of *rebus sic stantibus* (things standing as they are) and the standard principles of treaty law dictate that when a party to a treaty commits a material breach of its core provisions, the aggrieved party is no longer bound by its obligations.
The Federation of Malaysia was not created to be a unitary state where Malaya rules over two resource-rich dependencies. It was created as a partnership of equals.
If the federal government has spent sixty years disregarding the financial provisions, seizing our continental shelf, diluting our political veto power, compromising our demographic security, and ignoring the equal partnership status of Sabah, then it is the federal government that has dismantled the framework of 1963.
Therefore, the narrative must change. Sabah does not need to petition to leave.
We must collectively articulate that the Federation of Malaysia, as legally intended and formally executed in 1963, has been breached to the core—rendering its original structure functionally dissolved.
Sabah’s future lies not in begging for crumbs or negotiating for minor concessions, but in reclaiming its status as a sovereign nation, entitled to absolute self-determination.
It is time to step away from the shattered dreams of the past and build a new political reality grounded in the truth.
