KOTA KINABALU: A Warisan supreme council member has accused former chief minister Harris Salleh of scare-mongering by warning Sabahans against waking up the ‘sleeping tiger’ of peninsular leaders.
Mazliwati Abdul Malek Chua, secretary of Warisan’s MA63 bureau, said Sabah and Sarawak leaders were fighting to reclaim rights that inherently belonged to the two states and nothing more.
She said it was absurd of Harris to say it would be better for Sabah to remain silent on these issues, as state leaders had not been vocal about it in the past, and risked waking up the ‘sleeping tiger’, namely leaders in Malaya, which Sabahans often use to refer to the peninsula.
“Is that why we lost Labuan?” she said, referring to the transfer of the island to the federal government in 1984 as a federal territory. The transfer took place during Harris’s term as chief minister.
“I am glad that now we have leaders in Sabah who are brave enough to fight for our equal rights. Do not talk about sleeping tigers. Tigers sleeping or awake, we are not the prey. The dragon has awakened,” she said.
“When Sabah and Sarawak talk about equal partnership, it is an equal partnership with Malaya in the federation of Malaysia,” she said.
Sabah and Sarawak were entitled to every single thing specified in the Malaysia Agreement 1963.
“These include the return of 40% of the net federal revenue derived from Sabah. We are entitled to it, so we are claiming it. We have the immigration power, so rightfully we should have that. There are many others, and we are claiming them all. No more, no less,” she said.
Harris, in a statement to local media on Monday, had also said the demands for the state’s rights may result in Sabah being asked to pay an equal share of national defence costs. Mazliwati said such a fear was unfounded. - FMT
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