Shared national priorities key to meeting state needs, says Hamzah

 The Wawasan president says legitimate state interests must be taken into consideration through a common Malaysian agenda.

Wawasan president Hamzah Zainudin says that compromise could also involve giving states the space to formulate policies based on their respective needs.

PETALING JAYA:

Putrajaya must recognise the differing needs and resources of every state, but decisions on these issues should be guided by common national priorities, says Hamzah Zainudin.

The Parti Wawasan Negara president said leaders should not treat Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak as competing blocs, or reduce state concerns to political demands.

Instead, he said, the federal government must establish shared economic, education and social priorities, then assess how best to support each state within that framework.

“To be a good leader, leadership is not just (about) looking into one issue. You have to look at the country as a whole,” he said in an interview with FMT.

“Every state has its own agenda. Everyone wants to see their state prosper. But in terms of resources, some have better resources than others.

“What we should plan for is how to help each other and balance it, so that we can move forward as one country, not as separate states.”

Hamzah was responding to a question on whether a federal government that did not depend heavily on East Malaysian parliamentary support would be better placed to judge issues such as petroleum rights on their merits, rather than as part of political bargaining.

He did not directly address that premise. Instead, he said the danger lay in allowing different states to pursue priorities that were not aligned with a wider Malaysian agenda.

“The agenda has got to be ‘One Malaysia’,” he said, pointing to national policies on economy, education, and social progress.

“If you have different thinking from one state to another, then you cannot develop this country as one Malaysia.”

He said a stronger sense of common ownership is needed so that a Sarawakian living in the peninsula, or a Perak native living in Sarawak, is not made to feel like an outsider.

“The psyche of these people has got to be changed. We have to reset the psyche and make sure that everyone believes Malaysia is their number one agenda,” he said.

However, Hamzah said a national-first approach did not mean ignoring state authority or legitimate local concerns.

Asked how the federal government should respond to state demands, he said governments should sit down to examine the issues and come to a settlement, including by allowing room for state-level policymaking.

“It is not the demand. We should sit down, look into it and settle the issue,” he said.

“If we can show that we can compromise in terms of authority and give each other the opportunity to look into policies of the country, there is nothing wrong with also looking into policies at the state level.”

His remarks come at a point where the long-running Petronas-Sarawak dispute has widened beyond revenue-sharing and commercial arrangements to questions over the respective reach of federal and state laws.

Sarawak has sought a greater role in its oil and gas sector through Petros, including in gas distribution and aggregation, while maintaining that it wants to work with Petronas rather than replace the national oil company.

Meanwhile, Petronas has sought judicial clarity on the legal framework governing its operations in Sarawak. The dispute has implications not only for Sarawak’s development ambitions, but also for investment certainty and federal finances, given Petronas’s longstanding role as a major contributor to the national budget.

Hamzah had previously argued that Sarawak’s concerns should be fairly addressed without weakening Petronas, saying the country must preserve “the goose that lays the golden eggs” for the future of all Malaysians. - FMT