Foreign Muslims no longer ‘welcome’ in Sabah

Local Muslims have realised that they need to stand united with their local non-Muslim brothers, Dusun and Chinese, against the clearly neo-colonialist policies of Putrajaya.

COMMENT

Foreign Minister Anifah Aman’s criticism of the National Registration Department (NRD) on Sunday for embarking on the issuance of belated birth certificates and MyKads to 40,000 people in Semporna alone is telling.

Anifah, a Pathan-Dusun, wants the exercise stopped on the grounds that there could not be that many Malaysians in one small east coast district alone without personal documents.

He fears, as many people do, that the applicants were not genuine considering the large number of illegal immigrants in that area particularly along the entire eastern seaboard.

Interestingly, Minister in the Chief Minister’s Department Nasir Sakaran is backing the NRD’s exercise in Semporna on the grounds that it had been approved by Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein.

Nasir, a Suluk, has the support of former chief minister Harris Salleh who has often pontificated sanctimoniously on the power of the federal government to issue Malaysian personal documents, implying that they can be given to any Tom, Dick and Harry.

It was the same Harris, an Indian-Barunai, who “prophesised” in 1985 after his dramatic fall from power that the new Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) state government would not last as “many people were now getting blue ICs”.

Harris’ “prophecy” came true in 1994 when PBS came in with a wafer-thin majority of two seats against the 23 seats picked up by Umno (20) and Sabah Progressive Party (three), its breakaway ally from PBS. The PBS government, headed by Joseph Pairin Kitingan, fell a month later on the back of massive defections engineered by then prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

The 48 seats in the State Legislative Assembly have since 1994 increased to 60 with the addition of another 12 Muslim seats to add to the previous 20 seats, while the non-Muslim seats remained frozen at 28 and unnoticed by the world. In Parliament, non-Muslim seats from Sabah remained at 12 while the Muslim ones were increased by five to 13.

It’s not strange that Muslim seats should increase while non-Muslim ones remain frozen as in 1994 considering the large number of illegal immigrants placed on the electoral rolls. There’s no other logical explanation although it’s claimed that Muslim seats are small while non-Muslim ones are large but this merely further masks the real picture.

The stark differences in public between Anifah and Nasir on the NRD is the clearest example of the increasing disconnect between local Muslims and other Muslims, mostly from neighbouring countries, who have had an easy time so far in getting their hands on Malaysian personal documents, getting on the electoral rolls and even becoming instant natives and Bumiputera. The term “Bumiputera” is an umbrella political term to cover the Orang Asli, the natives and Malays, the last not being stated in the Federal Constitution as natives.

Open secret

At one time, the opposition to the illegal immigrant menace came mostly from the Dusun – including Kadazan or urban Dusun and Murut – and the Chinese. Now, it’s no longer so.

The local Muslims – Bajau, Suluk, Barunai, Irranun, and Dusun – have jumped on the anti-illegal bandwagon as well. Except for the Dusun Muslim, the other local Muslims are the descendents of immigrants who came in a long time ago, some dating back 300 years, but quite a number since the formation of Malaysia in 1963.

The new immigrant influx, mostly Muslim illegals, has many Bajau and Suluk from the Philippines. Elsewhere, they include Bugis from Indonesia, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. The Bugis dominate the taxi and mini bus trade in Sabah and even win a considerable number of government scholarships at the expense of local Muslims. Quite a number of foreign Muslims have made it into the State Legislative Assembly and Parliament and this is an open secret in Sabah.

There may be grudging acceptance of the illegal immigrants in Sabah but only so long as they don’t get their hands on Malaysian personal documents, get on the electoral rolls and go on to claim instant native and Bumiputera status.

Indeed, it has been estimated that 600,000 of the illegal immigrants at the very minimum have Malaysian personal documents and there are a further 1.1 million of them in the state. Meanwhile, local Sabahans number just 1.5 million. These figures are from 2005 when the state was estimated to have a population of 3.2 million. The total population figure now stands at some 3.6 million.

There’s no doubt that Sabah is a large state, indeed a country, with acute manpower shortages and labour needs. The law provides for the orderly entry of foreign labour but either many can’t be bothered or find that they have to fork out steep fees to work legally in Sabah. Hence, the illegal immigrant phenomenon in the state continues as employers, the authorities and even locals who employ illegals as casual labour look the other way.

The bottomline is that illegal immigrants provide cannon fodder for Putrajaya’s divide-and-rule tactics in Sabah.

At first, the federal government excluded the non-Muslim natives in Sabah, as in Sarawak, from the benefits of Article 153 of the Federal Constitution and the New Economic Policy (NEP). Having driven this political and economic wedge among locals, Muslim and non-Muslim, the powers-that-be next embarked on localising the overwhelmingly Muslim illegal immigrants.

That strategy seemed to sit well with the local Muslims as long as the non-Muslims had the upper hand in the political power equation in the state. Now, it’s no longer local Muslims versus other locals in the politics of the state. It’s local Muslims aligned with local non-Muslims versus other Muslims as the last factor make their presence felt in the economy and in the politics of the state.

Neo-colonialist policies

Nowhere is this development more apparent than in the fact that foreign Muslims are allegedly eyeing the chief minister’s post and are impatient to get their hands on it. It is this factor, more than anything else, that’s behind Anifah’s outburst over the NRD’s mobile teams being in Semporna to literally hand out MyKads to any Tom, Dick and Harry.

Local Muslims are now beginning to realise that not only do they have to share their opportunities with foreign Muslims, they are in danger of being forced to share the chief minister’s post as well with the latter. Sharing would eventually mean losing the position entirely as what has happened to the Dusuns and Chinese.

Putrajaya’s hidden agenda in Sabah is to “cheat just enough” to ensure that the Dusun and Chinese don’t get their hands ever again on the chief minister’s post. It makes little difference to them whether the chief minister is a local Muslim or a foreigner so long as the Sabahans don’t unite against the federal government. The need to keep adding illegals to the electoral rolls arises from their tendency to go back home, move to Peninsular Malaysia and from there abroad, or even move to non-strategic seats.

The chickens have now come home to roost.

Local Muslims have realised, albeit belatedly, that they need to stand united with their local non-Muslim brothers, Dusun and Chinese, against the clearly neo-colonialist policies of Putrajaya in Sabah, and by extension in Sarawak.

This realisation is apparent in the re-emergence of the United Sabah National Organisation (Usno) as a force in the opposition. The party is among those pushing for a promised Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) on illegal immigrants in Sabah. It’s feared that the NRD exercise in Semporna may be among Putrajaya’s fait accompli initiatives in the state before the RCI is set up.

There are also clear indications, Anifah-Nasir being one, that the various factions in Umno in the state may no longer be able to work together for long given the absence of an external enemy in the state from among the locals, the estrangement with Usno, and the increasing role either directly or indirectly of the illegals in the politics of the state.