Borneonising civil service: ‘Enough rhetoric’

Prime Minister's claim that he would like to see more Sabahans as head of departments in Putrajaya has been dismissed as 'hot air'.

KOTA KINABALU: Local opposition party, Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP), has condemned Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak for being all talk and no action when it comes to issues in Sabah.

Peter Marajin, a senior SAPP official, accused the Prime Minister of having no intention of ‘Borneonising’ the state as promised during the formation of Malaysia and merely mouthing the right words to mitigate any fallout that may translate into loss of support for his coalition in the coming elections.

“It is mere rhetoric to fool the people of Sabah,” he said of Najib’s claim that “he would really like to see more Sabahans becoming heads of government departments in Putrajaya and at the same time (see) more Malaysians from Semenanjung serving in Sabah.”

There is no reason, Marajin said, for the federal government not to immediately honour the long-overdue ‘Borneonisation of the Federal Service’ as promised in the Malaysia Agreement.

The SAPP supreme council member said the reality in Sabah was a far cry from the repeated assurances of ‘Borneonisation’ of the civil service.

Najib’s statement about the situation, he said, only reiterated Kuala Lumpur’s fundamental failure to honour the terms of the Malaysian Agreement signed by Great Britain, the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, and Sabah in 1963.

One of the terms of the agreement in the IGC Report is what is now known as ‘Borneonisation of the Federal Service’ which guaranteed that all federal posts in the state would be headed by Sabahans unlike presently where the top post in the civil service are held by civil servants from the penisula.

“After 49 years of Sabah forming the Federation of Malaysia together with the other already independent countries (Malaya, Singapore and Sarawak), Sabahans can only lament as most federal top posts in Sabah are monopolised by West Malaysians with the unacceptable perennial excuse that Sabahans are not qualified,” said Marajin.

“What we have now here is the Prime Minister of Malaysia saying he would really like to see more Sabahans becoming heads of Departments after 49 long years.

“What a shame. If Najib is sincere he, being the head of the ruling party, should just carry out the Borneonisation programmes now and at once without all the rhetoric to fool the Sabahans,” he said.

Marajin was voicing what many Sabahans feel about what they see as the re-colonisation by Malaya and a contradiction of the terms of the Malaysia Agreement.

Marajin, a practising lawyer, said that Malaysians of all creed would only feel comfortable and have a sense of belonging to the country when justice was accorded to them all equally.

“The Prime Minister must give back to the Sabahans and Sarawakians what was taken away from them and not to treat the East Malaysians as colonial servants of the KL Masters.

“Only with equal rights to employments, socio-economics and political developments then, and only then, the Sabahans will truly be proud to be called Malaysians,” he said.