Luping: We made the right decision but …

Former deputy chief minister Herman Luping believes 'extremist' West Malaysia is still far away from embracing '1Malaysia' unlike in Sabah.

By Melvin Augustin

KOTA KINABALU: Ask retired politician and lawyer, Herman Luping, what he thinks about Sabah’s agreement to help form Malaysia 50 years ago and he says without hesitation: “We made the right decision.”

The former deputy chief minister who once also served as state attorney-general said Sabahans should be grateful for the considerable development the state has experienced since agreeing to join in the formation of Malaysia 50 years ago.

“We should be thankful to our founding fathers for deciding to join in the formation of Malaysia. Most of us in Sabah today are a happy lot … happy because of what the founding fathers planted 50 years ago for us.”

But Luping, ever the politician,  also throwed in some caveats to temper his praise of what he said has been a remarkable 50 years for Sabah.

Laughing delightedly when asked to recount some of his most memorable experiences during the days Sabah was still known as North Borneo he said: “Okay, that’s a big question,”

But he muses that it is a comparison of the old carefree days against the new which is now fraught with complexities and the inevitable trade-offs.

He reminisced about growing up in a small kampong in Penampang “just seven miles from KK” with nostalgia when “most of us had to help our parents to go and plant the paddy field and later harvest it”.

“Those were the days when there was freedom for us to go to the river and the river was clean, you swim, you fish … . We had a good relationships with others.

“Most of us in the kampong were related to each another. All cousins. Those were the happy times for me,” he said reflecting on how race and religious politicking has divided people now.

1963 had immature leaders

Like others political analysts, Luping agrees that Sabah and its leaders were too politically immature at the time the agreement to join in the formation of Malaysia 50 years ago was made.

“There was no political parties in Sabah then. The first to be set up was the United National Kadazan Organisation in 1961 soon after Tunku Abdul Rahman announced his invitation for the formation of Malaysia.

“He called it then the Malaysia Plan,” he recalls and adds how Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew who was “a little bit ahead of us politically” wanted the union to face the new world that was emerging then with the departure of the British.

The general view then was that the merger with Malaya would build a stronger nation that could compete with its neighbours.

“We joined Malaysia because we are afraid of our neighbours who have eyes for us. We didn’t want anybody to disturb us,’ he said.

But as though foretelling the difficulties it would face for the next 50 years, the plan hit a snag immediately as the Malay leaders in Kuala Lumpur were not in favour fearing the 90% Chinese population of Singapore would change the demographic of the country.

“After the British stepped in to accept Singapore, Tunku Abdul Rahman decided it would be best to get the the Borneo territories – Sarawak, Brunei, Sabah – to join to counterbalance Singapore because he thought we were all Malays.

“He did not know that we were not Malays,” he said.

This, Luping said, was the first failure of understanding the complexities and fears that have plagued the country ever since.

Ascertaining the voice of the people through the parties that were formed – Unko which became Upko, Usno and SCA – was conducted clumsily.

“The Cobbold Commission was formed and came to the conclusion that the people of Sabah were generally for the formation of Malaysia. One-third were for the diea, one-third against and one-third had no opinion,” he recounted.

IGC, 20 and 18 points

Then, he said came the Inter-Governmental Committee (IGC) to discuss how to join and with what safeguards – 20 points for Sabah and 18 for Sarawak.

“There were various events … some of these were not very good.

“When we joined don’t think we were not losing … that there were no tempers lost during the negotiations at the IGC. There were quite a few voices raised each trying to get the best for the country … for the state.”

Luping also remembered the “many crises” that followed from “misunderstandings among the Sabah leaders.”

The rumpus between chief minister Donald Stephens and head of state Mustapha Harun was the first instance even though all the communities were equally represented in the nine-member cabinet with three from the Chinese (community), three Kadazandusuns and three Muslims.

This was the start of the immature politics in the state that would continue to wreck havoc for the subsequent 50 years.

Following the Malayan example, parties were split along communal lines and each jockeyed for power and took sides at the expense of the other in a shortsighted game of political one-upmanship.

Petty rivalries and greed caused endless political crises and development was set back right from the word go after the signing of the agreement.

All this in the first year of Malaysia’s existence and in 1964 Kuala Lumpur had to step in because of constitutional crisis that developed when Stephens and Mustapha.

This was in December 1964 but there was another event that “nearly broke Malaysia as far as Sabah was concerned,” Luping recounted.

Stephens forced to leave

This was the ouster of Stephens as federal minister for Sabah affairs because he was against the ejection of Singapore from the federation in May 1965 “because Lee Kuan Yew was asking for a Malaysia for all Malaysians irrespective of race or religion.

“I don’t know for some reason they (Kuala Lumpur) could not agree with that one.

“In the end Lee Kuan Yew had to go and Donald Stephens who did not agree was himself asked to leave as minister for Sabah affairs,” said Luping.

Stephens returned to Sabah and immediately called for a review of the 20 points and Sabah’s entry into Malaysia which enraged its partners in the Sabah Alliance government – the SCA and Usno – who possibly saw it as an opportunity to increase their control.

According to Luping, Stephens was given a show-cause letter for his intransigence on the state of the federation following Singapore’s ejection.

He was accused of treason by his partners, tried by the supreme council of the Alliance and told to resign or face the ouster of his party from the government.

He stepped down, gambling on the things settling down by the 1967 elections which was just months away. But the SCA and Usno had already planned enough seats between them to form a government without Upko.

“(So) you see those are the important events. In other words I’m trying to tell you that the formation of Malaysia earlier on is not really rosy.

“There was a lot of pitfalls, there were a lot of tribulations and trials, crises … so we are now trying to compare it today. What I’m trying to tell you is we have actually learned from these problems of the past today,” said Luping.

According to him the same situation happened in 1976 when Berjaya was formed at the behest of Kuala Lumpur who found Mustapha and Usno too difficult to deal with regarding Sabah’s oil wealth.

Constitutional crisis

By then the balance of power was already changing. There were 48 constituencies in 1976 – 20 Muslim, 20 KDM and eight Chinese.

The result of the 1976 election was 28 went to Berjaya and 20 to Usno. The 20 that went to Usno were the Muslim seats. The Chinese and Kadazans had by then combined to defeat Usno.

In 1985, Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) got into power after defeating Berjaya but had a problem after it reneged on a pre-election agreement with Usno leaders to form a coalition government.

Another constitutional crisis followed when Mustapha had himself sworn in as chief minister albeit just for a day.

But what followed was often described as ‘engineered rioting’ that caused a handful of deaths and damage to public property.

A shaky PBS government was formed and was forced to call elections almost immediately because there were indications that two or three of its people were about to defect.

Even after they won the subsequent election they had trouble governing the state as they needed money and the funds were held by the federal government.

Finally in 1987 when they were accepted into the BN there was an uneasy truce as Kuala Lumpur was still wary of the Christian government and things came to a head in 1990 when PBS pulled out from BN and joined the opposition.

Usno had dissolved and invited Umno to Sabah and opened the way for all the Peninsular Malaysia based political parties to set up branches in Sabah.

“MCA also came here, Gerakan also came here so did PAS and DAP … everybody … all the federal based parties were here in Sabah because we allowed it, you see.

“We lacked farsightedness. Our leaders were not thinking properly I think,”

“In hindsight, if the various leaders in 1963 used their bargaining power and remained in the middle and did not take sides with one race or one community instead become sort of the arbitrator I think our political history would be different today.

“Say, if in 1985 we had agreed to share, I think our situation now would be different and probably Umno will not be here, ” he said.

Beauty of Sabah

Luping is now sitting as a member of the Royal Commission of Inquiry investigating the massive influx of illegal immigrants into Sabah over the last couple of two decades.

He said despite being burdened by an often immature political leadership, Sabahans have something of great value to teach the rest of Malaysia which he believes is going astray.

He calls it – 1Malaysia.

“In Sabah, in my community we might call ourselves Kadazans but we may also have a grandfather who’s a Chinese. And, on the other side there might be a Suluk or a Bajau, a Brunei. We are all sort of inter-related.

“A lot of the Kadazans have Chinese ancestry. In my case I have a Sulok grandfather and also a Chinese grandfather but both my grandmothers are Kadazan. This is the beauty we have in our state.

“When my cousins are celebrating Hari Raya, I’ll be there. When I’m celebrating Christmas, they come. We never look at ourselves as different people … we are related.

“We – my Suluk brother/cousin, you and I – can sit at a table together here and eat what we want. You eat yours, I eat mine and he eats his.

“We are cousins and we don’t call ourselves cousins, we call them brother or sister. This is the beauty of Sabah.

“But there are people coming from the west who think this is wrong. I don’t want to see that. That is extremism,” said Luping.

Luping opined that it would take “a long time” for Sabahans to put “Malaysia first”.

“There is this imprint in our mind because we have been raised as a Kadazan just as my cousins have been raised as Suluk. So there is that feeling that they are still Suluk, they are still Kadazan, they are still Chinese.

“The feeling of being Malaysian will come eventually … in a future generation but not now.

“Meanwhile what we are trying to do is to have everybody accept the fact that we are a multi-racial, multi-religious country.

Extremism is a problem

“We don’t want to fight over religion. We don’t want to fight over race.”

“We don’t consider religion as an important factor but there are people who always seem to think that religion is an important factor.

“Alright it is important for the soul, its important for morality but when you go too extreme, that’s a problem.

What troubles the former deputy chief minister now as the nation reaches 50 years is the increasing marginalization and polarisation of the various communities in the country.

The tendency of the rich and powerful to become elitist and leave the less fortunate behind “because they are not as lucky as you” is becoming more prevalent in Malaysia, he warned.

He said a lot of poorer Sabahans are being left behind and not receiving the benefits of being Malaysians.

“They have been left behind politically and they have been left behind economically.

“We should be making sure that everyone of us in this country benefits from what we have got and what the country can offer to us. This is urgent.

“In 15 years time Malaysia will become a high income nation. We will be an industrialised nation.

“Our objective in the past was 2020. But it’s no longer. We’ve now been told that because of the progress we have made, in 15 years time we’ll be rated or considered as a high income nation – we join the industrialised nations.”

Hopes for Sabah

But to achieve that, he said, the government must not leave anyone out.

“That is what we mean by people first, performance now.

“Here in Sabah we are already 1Malaysia but in West Malaysia, not yet,” he said.

What he now hopes to see for Sabah is “a little bit of autonomy, little bit of freedom, respect for our own culture, respect for our own community and generally they should also respect that in our state there has always been a close relationship among the people.”

“I would like to continue with what we have planted here in our state. Muslims and Christians here used to being together.

“So we hope that we continue in Malaysia because it is the best for us,” he said.