Sabah secession idea too dangerous: Salleh

Sabah political leader says better to focus on the issues of illegal immigrants and Muslim extremist instead of breakup talk.

KOTA KINABALU: Sabahans should focus on the problems of illegal immigrants and on Islamisation and Muslim extremism instead of thinking about secession as a solution, says former chief minister Salleh Said Keruak.

He said that although Sabahans might have problems with Putrajaya, talk of secession and a separate republic was dangerous and irresponsible.

Even more dangerous was the way the Islam-Christian divide in Sabah (brought on by controversies over use of the word Allah and Bibles in Bahasa Malaysia) was being used as a reason for breaking away.

Calling out the dangers of parochialism, he gave as an example the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia, a federal republic, two decades ago when the Bosnian, Croat, Montenegrin and Serbian ethnic groups wanted to go their own ways.

The fact that the Islam-Christian divide is being cited as one of the reasons Sabah must consider leaving Malaysia makes this talk even more dangerous.

Nothing good can come out of such a solution and such talk will only heighten the tensions even further.

“Let common sense prevail,” said Salleh, who is head of Umno Kota Belud and Speaker of the state assembly. “The last thing we want is to try to solve a problem with an even bigger problem.”

He reminded Sabahans that the issue of prime importance were illegal immigrants in Sabah and the perception of Islamisation, or the acts of Muslim extremists that was taking root in Malaysia.

He said dialogue was the only way that Putrajaya could be made to understand the unhappiness of Sabahans.