Make public govt's report on Malaysia Agreement 1963 - SAPP

 

The government’s report on the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) should be made public so that the people can keep track of and evaluate the implementation of the agreement, says Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) president Yong Teck Lee.

The former Sabah chief minister said public scrutiny on the progress of MA63 compliance will keep government leaders and lawyers on their toes.

“It is only when the people, the politicians, academia and public servants, including judges, know the extent of non-compliance with MA63 that the country, as a whole, can move together in tandem with one another towards full compliance of the agreement that led to the formation of Malaysia.

“To keep the MA63 report away from the public view is to allow the ruling parties to be complacent and to take their own sweet time,” Yong said in a statement issued in Kota Kinabalu today.

He said the past practice of shielding the MA63 report from public scrutiny was obviously unsatisfactory and led to nowhere.

It has been a long 57 years since the agreement was signed, Yong added, and two generations have passed, but the full implementation of the MA63 is way long overdue.

“There should be no more technical committees that will bury MA63 in the maze of bureaucracy,” he stressed.

Instead, Yong said the Sabah and Sarawak and the Federal Attorney-General Chambers should by now be drafting new Acts of Parliament and new state enactments to give effect to the compliance of MA63.

He said SAPP has been advocating compliance with MA63 for a decade, adding that the party also supported a public interest case against both the federal and Sabah state governments to force the government to implement the iron clad promise of Borneonisation of the public service in Sabah.

- Bernama