A 1MALAYSIA HARVEST FESTIVAL

WATCH KAAMATAN VIDEOCLIP

NAJIB RAZAK, the Prime Minister, of course has been reading Insight Sabah (Kaamatan speaks for 1Malaysia). He says he is touched by the way Sabahans and Sarawakians celebrate their Kaamatan rice harvest festival that exemplifies his 1Malaysia unity policy.

And he tells peninsular Malaysians to learn from the Borneo states on how to live with one another in peace and harmony. But the indigenous Kadazandusuns and Muruts who make up about a fifth of Sabah’s 3.2m people have more reasons to rejoice. Najib is giving them a college of higher learning which will use their language to teach and a royal commission of inquiry (RCI) into illegal immigrants in their state that they have long wanted.

The prime minister has indeed struck a happy cord with Sabahans. Education and political well-being are at their heart ever since the late Fuad (Donald) Stephen and a group of educated natives used the Kaamatan to galvanize the Kadazandusuns and Muruts into a formidable political force.

They now control eight of the 25 parliamentary constituencies and 16 of 60 state seats. So they have been crucial in helping the Barisan Nasional coalition of 13 parties stay in power. The dominant United Malays National Organisation (Umno) has 13 parliamentary seats in Sabah. Ethnic Chinese control four. In the state assembly, ethnic Chinese have 11 seats and Umno 33.

The Kaamatan has thus become more than a spiritual or cultural celebration that honours god Kinoingan’s sacrifice of his only daughter Huminodun in the field to grow rice to feed his people so that they would survive a famine and never lack food.

It was Fuad, their first Huguan Siou or paramount leader, who turned the Kaamatan into what it is today. Joseph Pairin Kitingan, 71, a deputy chief minister, inherited Fuad’s mantel 36 years ago and has remained their undisputed supreme leader. He has never lost an election since he first won his state seat of Tambunan in 1976.

It is Pairin who mooted the RCI when he was a minister in the Berjaya government of Harris Salleh because he was concerned with an influx of illegal immigrants from the southern Philippines and Indonesia in the 1970s.

BEAUTY.....Melinda Louis is the new Unduk Ngadau (beauty queen). She is flanked by Fenny Doimis (left) who is second and Meryl Paladius.

His sober, serious and sensitive demeanour has won him respect and influence and, since his party joined the BN in 2002, federal leaders who count Najib and his deputy Muhyiddin Yassin have been giving him a hearing.

Insight Sabah was the first to report last November 4 that Najib was likely to set up the RCI after Pairin pleaded ardently for it at the 26th congress of his Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) on October 30.

And Kuala Lumpur has yielded to his request to set up a Kadazandusun and Murut college. Details are still skimpy but Najib will launch it at Kaingaran in Tambunan, the native heartland about 60km (37.5 miles) from Kota Kinabalu, on June 17. It is expected to offer courses in agriculture and animal husbandry and use the widely spoken Bundu Liwan dialect to teach.

On June 16 Najib is expected to grace the national Kaamatan celebration in Keningau, a little further away from Tambunan. This is his first visit to the Sabah interior and he will retrace the steps of his late father, Razak Hussein, in 1962 that will take him back probably to the roots of the Malaysian nation at Rumah Besar, the house of the late Sedomon Gunsanad, a politically influential native chief. It was there that Razak, then deputy prime minister, convinced the natives of Malaysia.

While in Keningau, Najib will launch an integrated livestock centre in Sook. A project of the Sabah development corridor, it is expected to get investments of 763m ringgit ($240m) in hybrid beef and dairy cattle that will transform the area into a vibrant economic hub.

Najib who will be accompanied by his wife Rosmah will also open a Sabah handicraft centre in Keningau.

Officials say the national Kaamatan celebration is likely to attract about 15,000 people. Hotels are all booked. And Najib will get a rousing welcome from 3,000 school children to the beat of 50 traditional gongs (brass drums). (Insight Sabah)