By JOHNNY SH LIEW, Anak Jati Sabah
KOTA KINABALU — Johnny SH Liew, Anak Jati Sabah, strongly condemns the recent analyst commentary attempting to paint the Ministry of Sabah and Sarawak Affairs as a successful “bridge” between Putrajaya and the Borneo States.
Celebrating digital tracking tools and minor administrative handovers while Sabah’s foundational constitutional rights remain violated is a classic shoe-shining exercise designed to pacify the Sabahan people.
When Sabah co-founded Malaysia via the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63), it did so under ironclad, fundamental assurances of political sovereignty, territorial security, and equitable economic development.
Decades later, Putrajaya continues to offer administrative crumbs while withholding our core wealth, tolerating local institutional decay, and ignoring blatant abuses of power. I present a point-by-point rebuttal to this Malayan-centric PR narrative:
1. A Digital Dashboard Cannot Mask Tainted Electoral Rolls and Diluted Sovereignty
The analyst praises the creation of an “MA63 Dashboard” to track 29 key issues. We remind Putrajaya that the constitutional rights of Sabahans are not a corporate project management timeline to be dragged out over decades.
The ultimate security assurance given to Sabah was the protection of our political self-determination.
Instead, our state was subjected to the legacy of Project IC—a systematic demographic engineering campaign that flooded Sabah with illicitly documented migrants. This has left us with grossly tainted electoral rolls that dilute the political franchise of genuine, indigenous Sabahans to this very day.
A digital dashboard completely ignores this structural elephant in the room.
What good is a federal “bridge” when the very democratic process in Sabah remains structurally compromised by an engineered electorate, allowing leaders to be installed who answer to Putrajaya rather than the Sabahan people?
2. Clean Up Local Governance: Look Into the Corruption Scandals and Abuse of Power
If Datuk Mustapha Sakmud wants to be a true strategic conduit rather than a mere megaphone for federal public relations, he must tell the federal government to seriously look into the deep-seated corruption scandals and rampant abuse of power plaguing Sabah’s administration.
The ongoing shockwaves from the state mining license bribery scandal—where explosive whistleblower videos exposed state lawmakers discussing illicit payments—cannot be swept under the rug with selective prosecutions of “small fries” while the institutional architects remain untouched.
Furthermore, the weaponization of the Chief Minister’s Office to block whistleblowers from entering the state to attend court hearings is a grotesque abuse of executive power.
A genuine federal bridge does not just track policy implementation on a digital dashboard; it actively ensures that federal anti-corruption apparatuses dismantle the systemic “duit kopi” cartel that is pillaging Sabah’s mineral and natural wealth from within.
3. Interim Grants Are a Direct Violation of Our 40% Constitutional Right
The commentary boasts about the federal government increasing the Special Interim Grant to RM1.5 billion as if it were a benevolent gift.
This is a deliberate manipulation of the economic promises made to Sabah.
Sabah is not a charity case begging for federal handouts. Article 112C and Part IV of the Tenth Schedule of the Federal Constitution guarantee Sabah a strict, mandatory 40% net revenue entitlement from the wealth Putrajaya derives from our state.
By continually forcing Sabah to accept “interim grants,” Putrajaya avoids calculating and paying the true, full value of our constitutional right.
While trillions in oil, gas, and tax revenues have flowed west to build Malayan mega-projects, Sabah remains engineered to host the highest poverty rates and worst infrastructure in the nation. An interim grant is a stall tactic, not economic justice.
4. Administrative Handovers Are Just Crumbs while the Cake is Stolen
The analyst proudly lists the return of regulatory control over electricity, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and technical departments as major milestones. These are baseline administrative functions that should never have been stripped from Sabah in a true federation.
While the federal government demands applause for returning these minor domestic portfolios, it continues to aggressively defend its capture of our macroeconomic wealth.
The analyst casually dismisses the unresolved status of the Territorial Sea Act 2012 (which illegally stripped Sabah of its maritime boundaries from 12 nautical miles down to 3), our continental shelf rights, and our full petroleum ownership.
Putrajaya has taken our multi-billion-dollar maritime and energy assets, and now asks us to be grateful that we are allowed to manage our own electricity lines.
Our Position
I categorically reject the narrative that tracking our oppression systematically is a form of progress. A “bridge” that merely facilitates the ongoing drainage of Sabah’s wealth while ignoring the structural corruption of our electoral system and the unchecked graft of local political elites is a bridge to nowhere.
We do not want committees, dashboards, or interim crumbs. We demand a thorough, uncompromised federal cleanup of Sabahan corruption, the immediate and unconditional restoration of our 40% revenue right, the full revocation of the Territorial Sea Act 2012, and a comprehensive cleaning of Sabah’s tainted electoral rolls. Sabah’s sovereignty is not up for negotiation.
