A Trascript of Sabah in the Limbo....

The following is the transcript from Malaysia Today, the commentaries to the letter posted to MT portal by a comrade of freedom fighters - 'batsman'.

Read his full article here - http://mt.m2day.org/2008/content/view/28181/84/#jc_writeComment

I find it read-worthy for those who are interested and will be concerned of the growing of East Malaysia politics - Sabah and Sarawak inclusive - and our brethren in those regions are faced with the limbo which we on the mainland may have ideas and views to extend the feelers into the far east domain, through this border-less and distant-less blogging facility and forum.

GET TO KNOW MORE FROM THE SABAHAN BLOGGERS:-

1) written by RockyMountain, October 30, 2009 10:49:29
You are spot-on ‘batman’. I am a Sabahan and ain't expert on Sabah matters either, but at least I have the so-called first hand eyewitness accounts of events unfolding before my eyes. We the local Sabahans wish to determine and shape our own political destiny within Malaysia. We want to be parts of the policy-making process in the country. We want our voices to be heard. We want to be in the main stream of the nation building programs. But, alas, we are not allowed. Instead, we have been forced to swallow whatever the Central policy-making body (headed by UMNO) thrust down on us, like it or not. They treated, are treating and will treat us perpetually as their colony rather than a part of the nation with equal rights. I am sure I am speaking for the Sarawakians as well.

On top of that, we feel that we have been CHEATED by the leaders of these perpetuators. When our forefathers agreed to form a nation called Malaysia in 1963 Sabah, Sarawak, Singapore and Malaya were supposed to be countries with equal share in terms of political powers as well as and management of our economics and in the control of the administration of the nation. Alas, we were reduced to into one of the states of Malaya. We fought for this in the hope that the Central will recognise our aspirations and rectify the mistakes they made and to right wrongs they had committed. We did this through the ballot boxes. USNO was toppled because it was too close for comfort with the Central UMNO. The BERJAYA Government which took over from USNO too had forgotten the Sabah cause and became a very comfortable bedfellow with UMNO. BERJAYA received the same fate as USNO at the hands of the right-thinking Sabahans so PBS emerged. And can you guess the subsequent responses we got from UMNO? The Muslim Pendatang HARAMs from the Philippines and Indonesia were and are still today given the Malaysian ICs and registered as voters. Their population alone now is 1.7 millions against the locals who only comprised of 1.5 millions.

Now brother ‘batman’ whoever you are, your brilliant input is needed how to overcome this, not just rhetoric, please. Thanks.

2) written by batsman, October 30, 2009 12:21:38
RockyMountain - TQ for your confidence, but I am not Sabahan. Besides I am barely keeping my head above the water in West Malaysia as it is. heeheehee.

Still, I have great sympathy for your struggle. Hopefully most of you guys are not in politics just for the glory of your old mums. Good Luck!

3) written by Zorro, October 30, 2009 13:39:21
Dear Batsman,

The chinese has been around for more than 5000 years and with so much of wisdom and learnings during that period they can survive anywhere in the world presently.

Malays has probably been around for moreless 700 years, and are still a learning race and is no match for the chinese for worldly business knowledge, yet.

As for the natives of Sabah and Sarawak, we probably have existed much lesser years than the malays and the saddest thing is our ancestors did not have any means of communicating written historical datas for their generation to read because they were simply illiterate! My father was the first literate generation.

The real predicament of the Natives of Sabah(Sarawak still enjoys equal majority of natives to that of malays)is that we are now a diluted population whilst when Sabah actually joined malaya to form Malaysia our population were more than 65%! and if it were to grow naturally we should be the majority community in Sabah(as it is now, natives only account for 33% of the population).

By right, the natives should have a bigger voice of the state affairs but as it is now we were being let down by our own leaders and the new colonist master; the malays.

And the problem deepens as time goes by as most of the natives are still at villages living their lives poorly and nobody is telling them that they deserve better because sabah is a rich state with abundance of natural resources which if channeled wisely, the natives childrens would all be able to go all the way to higher education for free and sealed roads should have reached their kampungs long time ago( not like now only when BN is in danger then allocations to build infrastructure are coming in in loads).

We do not trust Anwar because he was one of the masterminds together with TDM to allow those newly made bumiputera muslim in the 1990s ( the practice to attract natives to embrace Islam started way back in 1960s during Mustapha time- many were offered nice positions and promotion if they did).

However, I was willing to put my trust in him last election because I did believe that he would give us a better future in being fair to all the rakyats if he becomes PM. But what he did recently in not appointing the chief of Sabah PKR as what most of the grass roots wanted made me realize that he is still the same Anwar.

Okay, Jeffrey carry a lot of baggage in terms of his conduct with previous parties with and his marital matters but hey, the BN leaders are worst off! Personally I don’t like his ways but the important thing is the common rakyat identify with him because he has been one of the most persistent leaders in voicing our rights and he would have brought in a lot of votes. Our aim is to bring BN down to their knees right?

You should come here to sabah batsman, not just to look at the political situation here..but to enjoy paradise on earth( u should visit kundasang to see the majestic mount kinabalu to get a taste of natural cold whether and then enjoy beautiful beaches and sunshine on islands around kota kinabalu, all possible in a day trip!)

4) written by masterwordsmith, October 30, 2009 14:09:16
Dear batsman,

An excellent write-up by one who has not been to Sabah but who truly loves Malaysia! smilies/smiley.gifThanks! May I request for one on Sarawak which is plagued by similar woes and predicaments as highlighted in this post?

As it stands, they have been hoodwinked left, right and center and stabbed in the back to boot. The saddest part is that their past leaders have hoodwinked them as the chase for money and glory overtakes their loyalty to their own community. Their leaders have quarreled incessantly over private interests and private glory. Even brothers no longer trust each other and belong in opposite camps. In such a situation, it is too easy to get angry and lose direction, retreating into an insular dream world.

I believe the preceding paragraph applies to the rest of Malaysia, not just to Sabah! Sad but true... smilies/cry.gif

Keep up your wonderful work to stir Malaysians flame for change.

5) written by Kopi37, October 30, 2009 14:26:04
"Now brother ‘batman’ whoever you are, your brilliant input is needed how to overcome this, not just rhetoric, please. Thanks. "........

Hi RockyMountain,

We know how much we all have been played out and being lived in the environment of haunting by the hegemonic Umno evil plots for more than half a century, sigh!

All the efforts of our forefathers in fighting for independence, expelled the most fiendish and rapacious occupation by the Japs, then the disguising and hypocritical British as the salvation army was virtually a pandemic of the colonial virus at that point of time, the western civilization was riding rough sod over the third world uncivilized countries! We were one amid the many resourceful primitive countries which were brought into the greedy plan of the Caucasians with Sabah and Sarawak being charted in the map for full exploitation of the richly grown and gifted natural resources, fertile soil, precious minerals underground, timber logs etc. etc. all those were actually the foreign invaders were/are all up to!

The import of the shiploads of immigrants before the cold war was a concrete testimony of those greedy suckers whom they worked on their plan of looting with cheap labors via slavery!

When Umno took over, they were supposed to excel and broke through the ever 'epizoon syndrome' where the Malays were spoon fed with unproductive careers of becoming part of the feudalistic mechanism in the then so-called British administrative system and bureaucracy! Instead they mutated it, they made the then immigrants and hardworking forefathers of ours to slog under the hot sun and sweated for the golden minerals and proliferation of rubber plantations and all that! They then reaped through not by means of weapons and guns, but their mutated way of reaping - via the so-called 'constitutional democracy' which they adulterated with the opium brand of 'Ketuanan', and the action was through - corruption! First they worked through the bureaucracy, blended now with politics aka Umno politico-bureaucracy and they openly reap and loot the national coffer and in the daylight, rob and sabotage the citizen rights of fair shares of hard earned resources, all forms of welfare, the justice had been lost to their acts of expurgating the FC and substituted with the most evilly agenda of racist and bigoted islamist ideology - they tagged it - the Malay Supremacy! They made it a successful recipe for decades liked they were modifying the brainwash tactics of the Japs during the cold war era - the opium war in China!

Hence the handed out of opium and little goodies to pacify their clans in the larger community and the intoxication with the well engineered devious rhetoric and heretical theocracy was managed to be sustained through their eloquent pleas, in modern day terminology, they called it the perception war!

Now that the younger generation has gone through the ebb and rise, the elite groups they have been well trained have become awakening enough to realize that they are virtually one of the victims of such venomous intoxication by their so-called benevolent leaders have shown their true colors of being the real malevolent demons, self-seeking yet bankrupt of any morality!

The youthful intellectuals have also become disenchanted of the cheap marketing strategy of umno which of no national interests but only the parish pump politics which belongs to the ideal cloud-cuckoo-land of umno, the ill famous hegemonic lunatic fringe!

The 308 tsunami is an exert of people's power and the 'sophistication' of the mainland Malaysian and as the onlookers, we definitely hope that the Sabahans and the Sarawakians brethren will join in the formidable force to altogether fight for a notable cause of salvaging our Nation from all these rapacious ravages and stop it from being transmitted like the lethal pandemic to succumb our next generation to victimization, a doom-laden premonition?!...

As one of the fair-minded freedom fighters, shouldn't RockyMountain rise to the mount and preach the vast fraternity with your sermon on the mount with the manifest of the 308 tsunami and join force with all the comrades here from the mainland, made it happens, first from Sabah, then Sarawak?

This i feel is the real action to complement with batman's rhetoric, whatsoever, it's true! As RPK has always said - there's no second way about it!

6) written by batsman, October 30, 2009 16:50:01
Dear Kopi37 - we have our history just as you have yours. In west Malaysia a lot of Malays backed the Japanese in the hope of winning independence from the English. They were betrayed by the Japanese, so they backed the communists, and so on and so on. Often the current is too strong and even if we make the right moves, we still drown. Sad but true.

7) written by RockyMountain, October 30, 2009 16:53:38
Dear batman and Kopi37, thank you for the responses. You two write beautiful comments with brilliant English and fantastic writing skill and flare. I envy you. I wrote the above comment to prove to the MT ardent readers that Sabahans did indeed fight and are still fighting for our rights but failed, not because we lack the fighting spirit and courage but as I said in the above comment we were and are being outmanoeuvred with dirty tactics at every turn and with our hands tied up. Even Anwar who is now in PKR is a big letdown to the Sabahans because apparently the ‘UMNO mentality’ in him is still very much intact. This is also in response to comments from the avid readers particularly from our big brothers in Peninsula that we Sabahans and Sarawakians deserve to be ‘raped’ by these "Monsters" from KL again and again and again because we vote for BN in every election. Hence, we should not be cry-babies said RPK.

Can we really help it and stop crying like a baby?

8) written by mykantree, October 30, 2009 21:14:59
Dear RockyMountain,

I do agree with you that Sabahan politicians are constantly out-maneuvered by the UMNO all these years.Unless Sabahans are able to unite as one, you will continue to be out-maneuvered by UMNO.The way I look at it, the solution is simple.The 1st step is to reject UMNO and all UMNO affiliated Sabah political parties. These parties are no more than stooges of UMNO.

That's the only way Sabahan can regain its pride and a rightful place in Malaysia. Then you can all stop bawling like crybabies and spoilt kids.


LAST BUT NOT LEAST, I must thank 'batsman' for producing such an analytical writeup of the Sabah crisis though he admitted he had never set foot on Sabah land, yet with all necessary concise and precise in his articulation. Thanks Batsman. Viva people's power!