By Remy Majangkim – Kota Kinabalu
KOTA KINABALU: When Kapayan ADUN Chin Teck Ming officially served High Court judicial review papers to the Speaker of the Sabah State Legislative Assembly (DUN), he did far more than initiate a procedural challenge.
He pulled the pin on a constitutional grenade that Putrajaya and its local apologists have spent decades trying to bury.
The debate over Sabah’s 40% net revenue entitlement under Article 112C and the Tenth Schedule of the Federal Constitution has long been intentionally mischaracterized.
Federal officials and compliant state actors have treated a mandatory, binding constitutional formula as a discretionary executive allowance, an arbitrary sum to be negotiated behind closed doors over coffee in Kuala Lumpur.
That legal fallacy has now collided head-on with public accountability inside the Sabah DUN.
Caught Flat-Footed: Commercial Equity vs. Constitutional Entitlement
The sheer panic caused by this High Court action is already visible in the state administration’s public messaging.
When Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor hurriedly announced a 40% equity stake in PETRONAS’s Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) project, it was a classic case of being caught with their pants down.
Rolling out headline-grabbing commercial deals is a familiar playbook, but it conflates two completely different legal concepts:
Commercial Equity (FLNG Stake): A 40% business stake means Sabah acts as a corporate partner—risking state capital, incurring operational expenses, and receiving dividend returns.
Constitutional Revenue (Article 112C): The 40% net revenue entitlement is a non-negotiable tax rebate owed directly to the state treasury from all federal revenues collected within Sabah, without the state risking a single cent of capital.
Splashing the number “40%” across media headlines next to an LNG project is a transparent attempt to confuse the public and soothe rising skepticism.
Throwing commercial participation in front of the press does not fulfill Putrajaya’s constitutional debt, nor does it erase the procedural questions now facing the Speaker in open court.
The Fatal Silence of the Speaker
The catalyst for this judicial review is not merely that the Kapayan representative’s private motion, which sought formal disclosure of federal revenues collected from Sabah from 2022 to 2025, was rejected under Standing Order 43(2).
The true administrative breakdown occurred afterward.
On May 19, a formal written request was submitted to the Speaker’s office asking for clear legal grounds for the rejection.
To date, that request has been met with complete, unbroken silence.
In public law and administrative justice, silence is not neutrality—it is a breach of natural justice.
By refusing to provide written grounds, the Speaker’s office did not just shield federal tax collection figures from public debate; it stripped an elected lawmaker of the basic right to understand how assembly rules are being applied.
In attempting to avoid judicial scrutiny through internal legislative privilege, this unreasoned stonewalling handed the High Court the exact procedural handle needed to review the decision for arbitrariness and lack of transparency.
The Hidden Safeguards: The 30% Customs Entitlement
The obsession with hiding baseline tax figures exposes a deeper panic: Putrajaya knows that once the constitutional ledgers are opened, the full scale of withheld funds will be laid bare.
The 40% net revenue formula is only part of the fiscal architecture designed by the architects of the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63).
Take, for instance, Section 4, Part V of the Tenth Schedule, which explicitly guarantees Sabah 30% of all customs revenue collected on items where expenses—such as medicine and public healthcare, fall under the Concurrent List and are borne by the state.
When Putrajaya centralized healthcare administration without settling these constitutional financial mechanisms, it established a pattern of selective enforcement.
Reintroducing the 30% customs entitlement throws a massive spanner into the federal narrative. It proves that Sabah’s claims are not isolated requests for federal assistance, but an interlocking system of constitutional rights that Putrajaya has systematically avoided fulfilling.
You Cannot Stamp the Constitution with the OSA
For years, Sabahans have been told that tax collection figures, revenue calculations, and federal-state financial ledgers must remain secret due to “ongoing negotiations.”
Public tax collection is basic accounting, not top-secret military intelligence. Stamping executive secrecy or hiding behind assembly standing orders to suppress raw revenue figures does not project strength—it broadcasts guilt.
If federal collections in Sabah were negligible, Putrajaya would have published the audited ledgers years ago to settle the claim on the cheap. The desperation to keep these numbers hidden proves their true, staggering magnitude.
The Turning Point
If the Sabah DUN cannot demand the disclosure of federal revenues collected on Sabahan soil, where else are Sabahans supposed to turn?
By taking this matter to the High Court, Chin Teck Ming is forcing a long-overdue legal reckoning. A mandatory constitutional obligation cannot be converted into an arbitrary executive negotiation, nor can parliamentary procedure be used to enforce administrative secrecy.
The “Borneo Fortress” is no longer just a political reality; it is an unyielding legal front line.
Putrajaya and its local custodians can no longer hide behind procedural stonewalling or commercial PR distraction, because the constitutional can of worms is officially open.
