Jeffrey: Stop the ‘absolute power’ Putrajaya enjoys

Putrajaya must respect 1948/57 Federation Agreement with states in the peninsula and the 1963 Malaysia Agreement.

KOTA KINABALU: Bingkor Assemblyman Jeffrey Kitingan agrees with Bukit Bendera MP Zairil Khir Johari that the Federal Government needs to decentralise to empower the states and reduce power concentration at its centre.

This would be in line with the true nature of a Federation, reflect the basis for the formation of Malaysia and ensure the Federation continues to exist with stable federal-state relations, he added.

Jeffrey, who is also Star Sabah Chief, was giving his take on the spat between Zairil and Utusan Malaysia on federalism.

Delving into specifics, Jeffrey urged the Federal Government to reverse its agenda of turning Malaysia into a unitary state with concentration of power and money in Putrajaya.

“This concentration of power and money at Putrajaya has led to corruption, power abuse, unchecked and excessive spending as well as authoritarianism leaning towards a dictatorial regime and police state,” warned Jeffrey.

The people are awakening to this abuse, he stressed, and have begun to reject the Umno-led federal regime which ignores its other so-called component “partners” who are more like powerless hanger-ons.

”We need to stop this absolute power at Putrajaya. As the saying goes, ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’.”

Even Federal Ministers are getting arrogant, he claimed, and “ignore the voice of the people who have elected them and even trample on the rights of the people and the states to the extent of ignoring the Federal Constitution”.

For instance, under the 10th Schedule of the Federal Constitution, Sabah is supposed to get 40 per cent of the net revenue collected from the state but gets nothing in reality, he lamented.

“Meantime, Putrajaya gets fatter with more money to spend with this 40 per cent.”

As a result, he said that queues build up in Putrajaya for projects for these 40 per cent revenues and “the corruption merry-go-round begins to part-finance Umno’s political power game”.

Instead of fully supporting the Sabah Government as the sole authority in Sabah, said Jeffrey, “the Federal Government has set up a parallel government machinery in the state with the Federal Secretary Office and its army of ‘civilian personnel’ mainly brought in from the peninsula”.

“It is a subtle and covert form of colonialism with the top civil servants as its expatriates and the colonial masters in Putrajaya,” said Jeffrey.

The Federal Government needs to restore and practice true Federation as agreed with the 11 states in the peninsula in 1948, he said, and to respect and restore the true Malaysian Federation agreed with Sabah and Sarawak in 1963 and restore their autonomy and equal partner status.

The Federal Government must respect the components of the Federation and not treat, in particular the Borneo States, as though they belong to Umno/Malaya, he argued, and as if Sabah’s wealth and resources are private properties and exclusively managed by Umno.