Statement by Borneo’s Plight in Malaysia Foundation (BoPiMaFo)
KOTA KINABALU: Borneo’s Plight in Malaysia Foundation (BoPiMaFo) takes note of the comments by former Law Minister Datuk Zaid Ibrahim concerning Datuk Seri Salleh Said Keruak’s long-standing proposal for Sabah and Sarawak to hold one-third of the seats in the Dewan Rakyat.
The issue deserves to be examined against the constitutional and historical documents surrounding the formation of Malaysia.
Calling one-third representation “unfair” does not, by itself, answer the historical question.
THE ORIGINAL ARRANGEMENT WAS NEVER BASED PURELY ON POPULATION
When Malaysia was formed in 1963, the Dewan Rakyat consisted of 159 seats:
Malaya — 104
Sabah — 16
Sarawak — 24
Singapore — 15
These figures are recorded by the Parliament of Malaysia itself.
Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore therefore collectively held 55 out of 159 seats, approximately 34.6 per cent, while Malaya held about 65.4 per cent.
That historical arithmetic matters.
But there is an even more important piece of evidence.
During the debate on the Malaysia Bill in the British House of Lords on 26 July 1963, Lord Lansdowne, who chaired the Inter-Governmental Committee, explained why the Borneo territories were given substantial parliamentary representation.
He said the decision to give the Borneo States 40 of the 159 seats, despite their population then being only about 1¼ million out of a total Malaysian population of roughly 10 million, was a decisive factor in convincing the Borneo leaders that Malaysia was not a takeover but represented a “genuine offer of real partnership.”
That statement is enormously important.
It demonstrates that parliamentary representation for Sabah and Sarawak was not calculated simply by counting population.
If population alone had been the criterion, the Borneo territories would not have received anything close to 40 seats.
Representation formed part of the political assurances surrounding their entry into Malaysia.
THE IGC REPORT EXPRESSLY PROTECTED SABAH AND SARAWAK’S PROPORTION
Paragraph 19(2) of the Inter-Governmental Committee Report is even clearer.
It recommended that Sabah receive 16 seats and Sarawak 24 seats and then expressly provided that the proportion of seats allocated respectively to Sarawak and North Borneo should not be reduced during the first seven years after Malaysia Day without the concurrence of the state government concerned.
After that period, alteration of that proportion became subject to the constitutional amendment procedure under Article 159(3), requiring a two-thirds parliamentary majority.
Why was the word “proportion” protected?
Because representation was regarded as more than just a number of MPs.
It was part of the constitutional balance within the new Federation.
That is the historical point that must not disappear from the present debate.
LET US ALSO BE PRECISE ABOUT WHAT MA63 DOES — AND DOES NOT — SAY
BoPiMaFo believes this debate will be stronger if Sabahans and Sarawakians are precise about the documents.
Neither MA63 nor the IGC Report contains a sentence saying:
“Sabah and Sarawak shall permanently possess one-third of the seats in Parliament.”
We should not claim that such a sentence exists.
Originally, Sabah and Sarawak themselves had 40 of the 159 seats, or approximately 25.2 per cent.
The figure exceeding one-third arose because Singapore’s 15 seats were included together with Sabah’s 16 and Sarawak’s 24.
When Singapore left Malaysia in 1965, the constitutional arrangements changed.
The important question today is therefore not whether Sabah and Sarawak can point to a single clause transferring Singapore’s 15 parliamentary seats automatically to them.
There is no such express clause.
The deeper constitutional question is whether the federal balance and safeguards underlying the original arrangement should be restored or reconstructed for Malaysia as it exists today.
That is a legitimate constitutional question.
EVEN PUTRAJAYA NOW RECOGNISES THAT THE REPRESENTATION ISSUE EXISTS
This is not merely a historical debate being invented by Sabah or Sarawak.
On 11 September 2026, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim announced that the Federal Government had agreed in principle to increase the proportion of parliamentary representation for Sabah and Sarawak.
Importantly, the Prime Minister himself referred to the original situation in which Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak collectively accounted for approximately one-third of the parliamentary representation.
He said the present proportion was obviously lower and that increasing Sabah and Sarawak’s representation would require constitutional amendment.
Salleh Said Keruak has consequently asked an entirely relevant question: is Putrajaya proposing merely to increase the number of Sabah and Sarawak seats, or is it seeking to restore a meaningful proportion of parliamentary representation?
Those are not the same thing.
If Sabah and Sarawak receive additional seats while Peninsular Malaysia receives a proportionate increase at the same time, the constitutional balance may hardly change at all. Salleh therefore argues that the percentage of the total House, rather than merely the absolute number of additional seats, is what matters.
FAIRNESS CANNOT BE EXAMINED THROUGH POPULATION ALONE
There are two legitimate concepts of representation involved here.
One is the democratic principle that parliamentary seats should broadly reflect population.
The other is the federal principle that constituent territories may require special representation to prevent their constitutional interests from being overwhelmed by a much larger component of the federation.
Malaysia’s founders plainly recognised the second consideration.
Otherwise there would have been little reason to allocate Sabah and Sarawak 40 seats despite their relatively small population or to protect their parliamentary proportion in paragraph 19(2) of the IGC Report.
The historical documents therefore show that Malaysia was never designed solely according to the formula:
one person + equal population = parliamentary representation.
Federal balance and the particular circumstances of Sabah and Sarawak were also considered.
THIS IS THE QUESTION ZAID’S ARGUMENT SHOULD ADDRESS
The real debate should therefore go beyond whether one-third representation sounds “fair” or “unfair” when measured against today’s population.
The more useful questions are:
Why were Sabah and Sarawak deliberately over-represented relative to population in 1963?
Why did the IGC specifically protect their proportion of parliamentary seats?
Why did Lord Lansdowne describe the allocation of 40 out of 159 seats as a decisive factor demonstrating that Malaysia was a real partnership rather than a takeover?
And after Singapore’s departure fundamentally altered the parliamentary arithmetic, what arrangement best reflects that original concern for constitutional balance in the Malaysia that exists today?
Those questions deserve answers grounded in the historical documents.
ONE-THIRD SHOULD BE ARGUED AS A CONSTITUTIONAL SAFEGUARD — NOT AS A FICTIONAL CLAUSE
BoPiMaFo therefore believes that advocates of one-third representation should put forward the case accurately.
The argument should not be:
“MA63 contains an express clause permanently guaranteeing Sabah and Sarawak one-third of Parliament.”
It does not.
The historically grounded argument is:
When Malaysia was established, parliamentary representation was deliberately structured so that the territories joining Malaya collectively possessed more than one-third of the Dewan Rakyat, while Sabah and Sarawak themselves were granted disproportionately substantial representation and specific protection against reduction of their parliamentary proportions.
Whether Sabah and Sarawak should now collectively hold one-third is therefore a present constitutional and federal-policy question arising from that historical arrangement.
That proposition can be debated.
But it should not be dismissed simply by calling it “unfair”.
Malaysia’s own founding documents show that parliamentary representation for Sabah and Sarawak was never merely about population.
It was also about protection, constitutional balance and real partnership.
And that historical fact should remain at the centre of the discussion.
