‘Sabah is not Aman family’s property’

STAR believes that Chief Minister Musa Aman should stand up to 'bullying tactics' of Putrajaya if he wants to continue in his seat.

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah State Reform Party (STAR) chairman Jeffrey Kitingan has taken Chief Minister Musa Aman to task for repeatedly denying the existence of poverty in the state.

“This is really unbecoming on the part of the chief minister,” he said in response to Musa’s recent statement rejecting the independent assertions by experts that the poverty cycle in the state remained undiminished during his incumbency and may be growing.

Jeffrey said Musa’s stance on the issue was arrogant and should be deplored and roundly condemned by all Sabahans who have been suffering under the Barisan Nasional government since 1994.

“We are by no means entirely blaming Musa for the plight of Sabah, but he must share a large part of the blame,” said Jeffrey, whose elder brother, Joseph Pairin, is a deputy chief minister.

Jeffrey said Musa has been the chief executive of the state for a longer period than any of his predecessors, but yet had not accomplished much and was “not showing any sign of going away anytime soon and giving others an opportunity to do a better job”.

“Already, Upko [United Pasokmomogun Kadazandusun Murut Organisation] is calling for the return of the BN policy of rotating the chief minister’s post. Soon this call will become a clamour among all BN component parties,” he said.

“Even his own party members are restive about him continuing to hog the chief minister’s post even when he cannot do a decent job. This dog-in-the manger approach must go but not to be replaced by another member of the Aman family.

“There’s even speculation that Musa will eventually quit only if his brother, Foreign Minister Anifah Aman, replaces him. This is tantamount to holding the people of Sabah to ransom.

“The Aman family should not belabour under the delusion that Sabah is their ancestral property,” Jeffrey said in a statement.

According to Jeffrey, Musa has missed a golden opportunity to help alleviate poverty in the state and had compounded the problem by refusing to acknowledge its existence.

“We have no intention of trotting out figures on Sabah’s poverty. Others have made the case more eloquently and those interested can look up the Hansard or Google the relevant information.

“Suffice to say that Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Mohd Nor Yakop, has revealed the poverty numbers on Sabah during the recent session of Parliament.

“The salient point that comes to mind from Mohd Nor’s statement is that Nabawan, with a 70% poverty rate, is the poorest place in Malaysia,” he said.

‘Musa must show courage’

Jeffrey pointed out that other places in Sabah are not far off and this includes Pitas which, at one time, had the dubious distinction of being the poorest place in Malaysia.

He said Mohd Nor’s statement in Parliament tallies with the contents of the World Bank Report released in December 2010 at the Shangri La Tanjung Aru Resort in Kota Kinabalu to the Sabah government.

The report, based on figures from the Economic Planning Unit and the respective State Planning Units in Kota Kinabalu and Kuching, confirmed that Sabah and Sarawak were the poorest and secnd poorest states respectively in Malaysia.

In Sabah’s case, Jeffrey said matters are compounded by the large numbers of impoverished immigrants from the Philippines and Indonesia who are entering the official figures on poverty after somehow gaining citizenship.

He said the dubious MyKad situation has even led the World Bank to warn in an earlier report that “Sabah was chasing its tail in poverty eradication”.

“We are already poor, primarily due to the internal colonisation policies of Putrajaya, and the Philippines and Indonesia continues to dump its poor on us. This is like adding insult to injury.

“If Musa wants to continue in the chief minister’s chair, he should summon up the courage to stand up to the bullying tactics of Putrajaya.”

Jeffrey also said the state government needs to take back control over its fast depleting oil and gas resources as “we need the money more than the federal government and the Malayans”.

“It will be a Pyrrhic victory if we only get back control of these fields after they are depleted. Petronas is not going to keep these fields when they run dry.

“Musa should also enter into negotiations with the federal government to come up with a fairer and more equitable revenue-sharing formula based on the fact that Sabah has autonomy as a ‘nation’ in Malaysia.

“The federal government should only handle defence, foreign affairs and national economic planning when it comes to Sabah and Sarawak, and we can take care of the rest. The National Cabotage Policy should be abolished,” he added.

“All these steps coupled with the resolution of the MyKads issue are the keys to alleviating the poverty situation in Sabah,” he said.