Sabah-litic - Sabah the Step Child

Sabah ... where? What is that?

I could not imagine there are among Malaysian who will ask the above.....

That's could be the reality in the real life.....

You know why there are so much talk about Sabah-litic (I short-formed that from Sabah Politic after the so called Perfect Storm of March 8, 2008 Malaysia Election????

Facts or Fictions.... well, those us as Civilized and Brained people to evaluate, ok?

The Claim ... Sabah is being treated as Step-child (Anak Tiri).

As one of the state within the Federation of Malaysia, Sabah is among the worst performed states within Malaysia especially in terms of the standard of living (Sabah has the highest ratio of hard core poor people and many of them in the rural areas still live miserably and survive on small fishes caught from swamp/rivers and wild vegetables/animals for the past many years we called ourselves as Malaysian).

How all these can happen to our people when we has among the biggest and highest building in the world, when we are one the venue for the F-1 race, etc and etc ....??

Why the Step-child tagged?? Do you all know that the so called decedents from Sultan of Sulu from the southern islands of Philippines still laid claim on Sabah? According to them, Sabah was then rented to the British during the early colonial year ... to the North Borneo Company ... so until now, Sabah still belongs to them....

Well, well ... how on earth that this claim is still valid when Malaysia (well the Federation of Malaysia) came into existence on 16th September 1963 and the Philippines is now a republic that headed by an elected President not the Sultans. And the funny thing is that why our Federal Government did not take this claim seriously? Why?? Is it that Sabah is just a STEP CHILD and thus, the complicated matter like this just leave it aside until one day that the case of Pulau Batu Puteh repeats (Pulau Batu Puteh - an island that supposed to belong to Malaysia but was ruled by ICJ it is now part of Singapore ... all because our Executives, Councilors and Member of Parliaments ... too complacent about the small rock initially)...

Because of this claim by the descendants of Sultan of Sulu (well, as I said earlier, the Philippines is a Republic now), Sabah now is facing the worst illegal immigrants issue. Can you imagine that the Filipino from the southern islands of the Philippines can just come and go just like that? Well, honestly, I am not against the so called Illegal Immigrants ... they are just like us, human ... the only difference is that they are not properly documented and governed ... we have identity cards and passport ... so any illegal activities and crimes that committed by anyone of us (I mean the citizen and other properly documented residents of Malaysia), we can be traced upon ...

But imagine, the so called Illegal Immigrant ... they live amongst us and we don’t even know who they are ... they can just commit crimes (robbery, rape, murder and etc) and just disappear easily ... THIS IS THE MAIN issue.

But why??? Why Malaysian Government and its agency could not do anything (or may it harsh to say that powerless or slowly to response to any of this) about this Illegal Immigrant issue?

It is not that we (Malaysian Government) do not have the means. Come on ... we have the serious and well trained RED HAT armies and we have Naval based with complete TOOLS ... submarines and combat vessels... If we don’t have, buy. We, Sabahan, also contributed to the Government coffers by paying TAX of all sorts, just like our fellow Malaysian living in Sarawak and Peninsular.

For me, the mother of all these issues ...came from the CLAIM ... and because of that the Philippines Government does NOT want to set up a consulate in Sabah and because there is no Philippines consulate in Sabah, the issue of Illegal Immigrant becomes very complicated and impossible to control.... Without a consulate, its hard for Malaysia to send back the Illegal back to their home country and due to these all detention stations (like RUMAH MERAH at Lok Kawi, KK) jam packed ... so how ?? De-tending illegal’s slowly become liability to the Malaysian Government as we need to build more Detention center / station and then we have to feed them ... So it’s a CATCH 22 situation.

So for me, as a lay man; a non politician, a non academia, non NGO. Just a plain SABAHAN ... solve the CLAIM issue 1st ... that’s the mother of all the illegal immigrant issue.... do not POLITICISED or argue on whether ROYAL COMMISSION of INQUIRY (RCI) or High Powered Federal Cabinet is better. To all those Sabah politicians, don't act and lie to us ... we are not stupid ... most of the Politicians that brought up the issues have been in power either in the Sabah State Cabinet or Federal Parliament for the past 20 years or so ... so DO not embarrass yourself by saying something stupid .... If you really want to solve the issue, just be sincere and act whole heatedly ... NO problem in the World is not solvable.... unless you don’t have the will ... Think of the future of your next generation in Sabah ... your lovely sons and daughters too ... There is no use of becoming a hero in the parliament by saying this and that but at the end of the day, what had been said just become a "hear say" only. And, please do not the blame the Federal Government now since we have the little advantage on hand NOW to handle the matter once and for all ... take this advantage and unite for the sake of the issue.

By not solving the Illegal Immigrant problem, we are also being unfair to the illegal immigrant themselves. They are just normal human like us. They want to survive... they need to eat and live ... create a proper channel so that everyone is being treated fairly and in he most humane way possible.... if not, we are opening the door for certain bad people who used this to their advantage i.e. by distorting and bullying the illegal’s .. The Government will create a means for the bad agents to commit corruptions and abuse of powers … May God Bless Us, the under privilege State of Sabah, The Land below the Wind ….