PARLIAMENT | Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Sabah and Sarawak Affairs) Maximus Ongkili has urged Sabah and Sarawak MPs not to incite sentiments against Putrajaya.
This comes after Azis Jamman (Warisan-Sepanggar) and Jeffrey Kitingan (PN-Keningau) last week implied that secession calls are growing louder from Sabah and Sarawak over what they deemed as discriminatory and unfair allocations in Budget 2022.
“I hope MPs from Sabah and Sarawak are more proactive in things and are not so easily influenced by politics, such as that by some MPs who said that Sabah and Sarawak are colonised by Putrajaya.
“Such words are unhelpful. We should be very careful in that respect because some of you have been in government.
“Has there ever been proof that Putrajaya had colonised Sabah and Sarawak?” Ongkili (above) said during the minister’s winding-up speech for the Budget 2022 debate in the Dewan Rakyat today.
He called on the MPs to help “make the country work” under the new Keluarga Malaysia umbrella, rather than issuing inflammatory remarks.
Though Ongkili did not name anyone, Azis interjected that he never said he wanted Sabah to leave Malaysia.
“I did not say I want to leave Malaysia. What I was talking about in this august House (the other day) was regarding the treatment from the federal government towards the states of Sabah and Sarawak,” he said.
Azis reiterated his arguments from his debate on Budget 2022 last week, saying that only about 40 percent of the RM5 billion in average that has been allocated to Sabah from 2019 to 2022 is used up each year.
“That is why we urged to change the system and hand over the allocation directly to the Sabah government,” he said.
As such, he urged Ongkili – as the minister in charge of Sabah and Sarawak affairs – to fight for the allocations to be handed over in full to the Sabah and Sarawak state governments. - Mkini
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