Issued by Datuk Seri Anifah Aman
Dear Zaid Ibrahim,
KOTA KINABALU: I have always admired your flair for historical fiction, particularly when it casts Sabah and Sarawak as cunning masterminds outwitting hapless Malaya.
Your latest tale on the Borneo Bloc as some grand ploy for “control” is, as ever, a masterpiece of selective memory—though one might charitably call it a twist of facts that would make even the most imaginative screenwriter blush.
Seventy years ago, you say? How quaint. Sabah and Sarawak didn’t “ask their British masters” to join Malaya on a whim; they negotiated Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) as equal partners in forming a new federation, with solemn constitutional promises etched in stone—not some colonial handout brokered by Whitehall or an astute Lee Kuan Yew. Whitehall? Please. The Inter-Governmental Committee, led by Sabahans and Sarawakians (among whom were my uncles the late GS Sundang and Sedomon Gunsanad) alongside Malayan representatives, hammered out those terms. But why let tedious accuracy spoil a good yarn?
You paint us as gatekeepers who “decide whether to allow you to visit” while barring work or business without local partners. Charming caricature, but Sabah’s doors have always been open to genuine economic partnership—not the extractive resource grabs that left us pleading for our own 40% revenue share, a right MA63 explicitly guarantees, not “endless” handouts as you frame it. Challenging the Law of the Sea, PDA, Petronas? Those aren’t petulant demands; they’re lawful assertions of eroded autonomies, with 30-odd unresolved MA63 points validated by courts, including the recent Kota Kinabalu High Court mandamus.
The Borneo Bloc seeks balance, not the “control” you hysterically ascribe—balance Malaya’s leaders have squandered through decades of centralisation. And Malaya’s retort? Not visionary statesmanship, but leaders fixated on the PM’s chair, as you so astutely note. How perceptive.
Facts untwisted: Sabah fights not to dominate, but to reclaim what Malaysia’s Constitution owes us. Perhaps one day your admiration might extend to engaging those facts, rather than rewriting them for dramatic effect.
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Jesselton Times.
