Sabah, Sarawak may lose oil, gas forever

Luke Rintod

The two states have already experienced '100%' loss of their natural resources under the Umno-controlled Petronas, according to UBF.

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah and Sarawak will lose their oil and gas resources “forever” if the Petroleum Act 1974 is not amended, United Borneo Front (UBF) leader, Jeffrey Kitingan, said.

He said that the two states have already experienced “100% losses” of their oil and gas resources under the Petroleum Act.

He added that unless MPs and party leaders in the two states compel the federal government to amend the Act now, the states will “lose forever” their reserves.

He said both the Sabah and Sarawak governments have absolute rights to seek a review or even a repeal of the Petroleum Act.

“But whether the Petroleum Act itself is constitutional, given the position of Sabah arising from the Malaysia Agreement 1963 and the safeguards given to the state by the founding fathers of Malaysia, is debatable.

“If the Act is to be continued, Sabah and Sarawak should be entitled to nothing less than 50% of the profits derived from the oil and gas assets.

“The Sabah government should be entitled to a share in Petronas, given that the state is a stakeholder in the profits derived by Petronas compared to non-oil producing states.

“The monies invested by Petronas in Sudan, Iran, Iraq and other overseas ventures are derived partly from profits obtained from Sabah and Sarawak’s oil and gas assets.

“Similarly, profits from Sabah’s assets have helped Petronas establish its subsidiaries, some of which are now listed on Bursa Malaysia and generate more profits for Petronas ,” he said.

Urgent steps

Jeffrey said that so far the two states had not been benefiting from the oil-related industry and must take urgent steps to address the issue with the Barisan Nasional (BN) government.

If they failed to so, he said, both states will continue to lose rights to profits from oil and gas derived from their territories.

“In reality, Sabah and Sarawak have suffered a 100% loss of their oil and gas because under the Petroleum Act, all the oil and gas reserves in the states are lost forever… they are vested in Umno-controlled Petronas.

“In return, Petronas pays the state governments a measly and miserable 5% of the revenue reaped by Petronas.

“The 5% so-called oil royalties cannot adequately compensate the total loss of the oil and gas assets which, by right, should benefit all Sabahans and Sarawakians first and not Petronas,” Jeffrey said in a statement to FMT.

He said that the revenue of Petronas is based on operational profits and as such, it is a gross injustice to Sabahans and Sarawakians that they only get 5% of the profit while 95% of it goes to Petronas.

Jeffrey also said that in January 2011, Sabah Chief Minister Musa Aman had announced that the state contributed 26.9% of the 637,000 barrels of crude oil produced per day in Malaysia.

“In the 2011 Sabah state budget, the chief minister projected the oil royalties (5%) to be RM721.7 million, of which all will be used for the annual expenditure of the state.

“Not a single sen is saved or invested for the future of Sabah and Sabahans.

“In Norway, the bulk of the oil revenue from its North Sea oilfields is saved and invested, making Norway one of the largest investors in the whole of Europe.”

“This means that every Norwegian owns the asset (oil) extracted long before he or she is born,” he said.

Mind-boggling

Jeffrey said that the oil and gas problem in Sabah and Sarawak was compounded by the lack of transparency in the dealings.

He added that there was also a lack of political will to establish an oil and gas industry, especially in Sabah.
“The latest arrangement to divert Sabah’s natural gas from Kimanis, Papar, to Bintulu, Sarawak, for processing is mind-boggling.

“The RM4 billion Kimanis-Bintulu gas pipeline and the billions spent on expanding the Bintulu LNG plant could very well have been invested in a new processing plant in Sabah where Sabahans could reap the benefits of the future spin-offs from such an investment,” Jeffrey said.

Anwar shouldn’t unilaterally decide on Sabah, S’wak CM

Comment

He doesn’t seem to realise that people in Sabah and Sarawak prefer their chief ministers to be elected by democratic means

De facto Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) chief Anwar Ibrahim  attributes his poor showing at the April 16 Sarawak state elections  to, among others, the idea of a Dayak chief minister.

Anwar was  entertaining an online news portal’s TV network earlier this week on his monumental failures in Sarawak, as in Sabah earlier. Like his equally naïve interviewers, he didn’t seem to know whether he was coming or going on Sarawak.

Anwar’s take was that the Malays in Sarawak were put off by the idea of a Dayak chief minister and refused to award even one seat to the party.

He claimed that the minority Malays, only 20 per cent of Sarawak, accused him of promoting the idea of a Dayak chief minister at their expense. Anwar, it appears, tried to unsuccessfully reason with them that the Dayaks were in a majority in Sarawak and therefore the chief minister should come from that community.
For those unfamiliar, Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud is a Melanau and therefore a Dayak.

The difference is that unlike the great majority of Dayaks who are Christian if not pagan, Taib is a Muslim.
However, he has a Christian paternal grandfather and as many Christian relatives as Muslim ones. He also avoided talking about Islam like the plague since he knew that the Dayaks were watching him like a hawk.

Taib even blasted the recent seizure of bibles in Malay print in Kuching as “stupid”.

It was enough to secure the release of the bibles.

Interestingly, no Sarawak Malay has ever been chief minister of the state.

All four chief ministers so far have been Dayak, Taib and his predecessor and maternal uncle Abdul Rahman Yakub being Muslim, and the first two being Christians i.e. Stephen Kalong Ningkan and Penghulu Tawi Sli, both Iban Dayaks from the Sarawak National Party (SNAP).

The Ibans, the biggest community in Sarawak, failed as chief ministers, because of opposition from the other Dayak communities i.e. Bidayuh, Orang Ulu and Melanau.

The Sarawak Malays are in no position to object to a chief minister on the grounds that he’s Dayak or a non-Muslim.

To digress a little, the Sarawak Malays are in fact Bidayuh living on the coasts of the Kuching division and Ibans along the coast of the other division who converted to Islam.

The Brooke dynasty referred to them as Malays after the fashion of the colonial British who used it as an umbrella term to describe various ethnic groups in Peninsular Malaysia.

Also, it’s unlikely that the Dayaks will ever support the idea of a Sarawak Malay being chief minister of the state. If one is thrust on them, he won’t last in the tumultuous politics of Dayak country.

It’s more likely that a Sarawak chief minister would continue to come from among the non-Iban Dayaks – the creed is not in question – and this would ensure political stability in the state. If a Sarawak Malay wants to be chief minister he should not deny his Dayak heritage.

PKR’s emphasis on a Dayak CM, in any case, led to allegation among the Sarawak Malays that such a candidate would turn the state into a Christian one, according to Anwar.

The de facto PKR chief is like a “bull in a china shop” raising a preposterous non-issue. He naively treads, like all Peninsular Malaysians, where even devils and angels dare not.

Sarawak is Anwar’s second monumental blunder in Malaysian Borneo after Sabah.

In Sabah, Anwar thundered that there was no way he would have Jeffrey Kitingan as the Sabah PKR chief”. Jeffrey, who has many Musli relatives, was accused openly by Anwar of being a racist and harbouring a hidden Christian agenda, whatever that means.

Anwar was playing politics where he should not be doing so.

Jeffrey pushed for the idea that the Sabah PKR chief should be democratically elected by the division chiefs and not appointed by the party headquarters (read Anwar) in Kuala Lumpur.

Anwar would have none of it and wanted a Muslim to head Sabah PKR although the majority of the members were non-Muslim Dusun, including Kadazan (urban Dusun), and Murut.

Anwar’s excuse is that the Muslims, no doubt the illegal immigrants with MyKads included, were now in a slight majority in Sabah.

Baru Bian seen as stooge for Anwar

He decided unilaterally that the Sabah chief minister should be Muslim.
He does not seem to realise that the local Muslims in Sabah were not a homogenous community and were further divided into Dusun Muslim – Ranau, Bisaya and Orang Sungei, among others – Bajau, Suluk, Brunei Malay, Irranun, Banjar, and Cocos-Keeling, among others.

In “compensation”, Anwar decided also unilaterally that the chief minister of Sarawak would be Dayak and Christian.

He went on to appoint Baru Bian, an Orang Ulu Christian, as Sarawak PKR chief.

No one in Sarawak accepts Baru because he was not elected but thrust on the membership by the party headquarters (read Anwar).

That’s one reason why PKR failed to interest the people of Sarawak on April 16.

Baru was seen as a proxy and stooge for Anwar and Peninsular Malaysians.

Jeffrey’s stand in Sabah, meanwhile, was that if the division chiefs in Sabah elected a Muslim head, so be it.
Anwar did not want to risk elections and deal with the possibility of a non-Muslim head.
Eventually, Jeffrey left amidst accusations that he was the King of Frogs, a label he has explained, and interested only in party posts and positions and in being number one and chief minister.

Jeffrey’s explanations that his politics was all about the people, the issues, principles, policies and priorities, and not posts and positions, were pooh-poohed by Anwar and drowned out by the propaganda barrage from party headquarters.

Sabah Deputy Chief Minister Joseph Pairin Kitingan thinks that Anwar made many promises to Jeffrey, all of which he had no intention of keeping, made use of him to build up the party in Sabah and eventually played him out.

If anyone is obsessed with the ethnicity and faith of the chief ministers of Sabah and Sarawak respectively, it’s politicians from Peninsular Malaysia. They don’t seem to realise that Peninsular Malaysia – Malay, Chinese, Indian – is no political model for Sabah and Sarawak.

The people in Sabah and Sarawak prefer the chief minister to be elected by democratic means and decided by the respective governors in accordance with the constitutional provisions. Any departure from this would be an exercise in illegality, and ultimately, futility.

The current unease in Sabah over the post of chief ministeris is wholly due to the fact that the candidate is appointed by Putrajaya and not elected by the people in accordance with the state constitution.

Also, Sabahans are no longer willing to tolerate a situation where a candidate stays too long in the post. The idea is that the rotation of the Sabah chief minister’s post should be continued but every five years and not two years as previously and by election. It’s not known whether the proponents want the chief minister’s post to be confined to Umno, an unacceptable idea, or rotated among the Barisan Nasional component parties as until 2003. The local parties want in as well.

Pakatan Rakyat, the opposition alliance, and Anwar would do well to take heed of the thinking on the ground of the people in Sabah and Sarawak on the post of chief minister for their respective states. PKR should allow only elected candidates to head the party’s Sabah and Sarawak chapters.

In that case, Jeffrey would probably be back with PKR in a wink, the party is yet to accept his resignation, but not so much to wrest the post of Sabah chief. Many feel that he should play the role of elder statesman in Sabah and Sarawak for PKR and function as a de facto chief. Jeffrey’s return to PKR may help arrest the party’s declining fortunes in Sabah and Sarawak.

Joe Fernandez (Free Malaysia Today)

Sarawak CM 's son divorces wife

Sarawak CM's son with new girlfriend

KUALA LUMPUR: Sarawak Chief Minister's son Datuk Seri Mahmud Abu Bekir Abdul Taib has officially divorced his estranged wife Datin Seri Shahnaz Abdul Majid.

He divorced Shahnaz, sister to jazz queen Datuk Sheila Majid with a “single talak” at the Syariah High Court here Wednesday.

The divorce proclamation was uttered in an open court before a Syarie judge Mohamad Abdullah who allowed the proclamation after being satisfied that the couple's marriage could not be saved.

The judge was also told that the couple had not been staying together as husband and wife for the past 11 years.

By NURBAITI HAMDAN (The Star)

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Elimination of NCR on land violates fundamental rights.

PUTRAJAYA: The elimination of native customary rights (NCR) on land occupied by two groups of indigenous people in Sarawak amounted to a gross violation of their fundamental rights, the Federal Court here heard yesterday.

Lawyer Sulaiman Abdullah, representing the native groups, argued that the directive issued by the Sarawak Minister for Resource Planning to deny the customary rights of natives on their land ought to be set aside because it deprived the natives of their life, livelihood and way of life.


He said the survival of indigenous people, such as the appellants in this case, was intrinsically linked to their land because their source of food, medicine and life support system, including their economic, cultural and social way of life, would be taken away when they lose their land.

Sulaiman said Sections 5(3) and (4) of the Sarawak Land Code under which the directive was issued were unconstitutional because the directive amounted to taking away of life, thus violating Article 5 (1) of the Federal Constitution.

Arguing before three-man panel led by Chief Justice Tun Zaki Azmi, Sulaiman said the state laws had failed the test of being just, fair and equitable as defined under the Federal Constitution because those Iaws violated the basic rights of the native people.

Sulaiman also said NCR were not merely proprietary rights that could be equated with the right of an owner of alienated land. Instead, NCR amounted to a right to life and comes under the protection of the Federal Constitution.

"Would mere monetary compensation be adequate to compensate for the interests of native communities in their lands in view of the fact that the NCR amounted to a right to life, and extinguishment would deprive them (natives) of their right to life and livelihood," he said.

He said the special relationship of the indigenous community and their land was also recognised by international human rights law and Malaysian law. He added that it was the responsibility of the Sarawak Government to protect the rights of the natives.

"For natives in Sarawak, this is also a reflection of the Brooke government's belief that Sarawak 'is the heritage’ of its people and that land is their 'lifeblood'," he said.

He also said procedural fairness was not accorded to the appellants, as the natives were not consulted prior to the elimination of their NCR.
The two groups are, respectively, from the Dayak communities of the Kayan, Kenyah and Ukit ethic groups and Iban communities.
The first group - Bato Bagi, Bit Buneng, Siring Angah, Adem Anyie, Jating Ibau and Ngajang Midin – represents five longhouses along Batang Balui in BeIaga District, Kapit, which were affected by the construction of the Bakun Hydro-Electric Dam project.

This group refused to move to the Asap Resettlement Scheme, and continues to stay upriver in Batang Balui.
The second group, Jalang ak Paran and Kamponq anak Amih, are residents of Rumah Munggu, a longhouse in Tatau, Bintulu, Sarawak. Their land in Ulu Batang Tatau was acquired to build a pulpwood mill.

This group, comprising their families, continues to live on its land. Until today, no pulpwood mill has been constructed on the, proposed site and the land reverted to jungle.

Native groups were appealing against the decision of the Kuching High Court that summarily rejected their suit on the question of law. The High Court and the Court of Appeal ruled that the minister's direction was valid. The natives, however, want their case to be remitted back to the High Court for full trial.
Sarawak State Legal Counsel Datuk J.C. Fong argued that NCR, for some 80 years, under the laws of the State of Sarawak, could be eliminated upon payment of whose NCR have been extinguished.

He said NCR were extinguishable if the land over which NCR was exercised was required for public  purpose, such as in Bato Bagi's case where the land was required for the development of the Bakun hydro-electric project to generate hydro-electricity for public use.

Fong said the rule of natural justice, which requires a person to have the right to be heard, was excluded from the law.

The panel, which also included Chief Judge of Sabah and Sarawak Tan Sri Richard Malanjum and Federal Court judge Datuk Seri Md Raus Shariff, fixed May 16 for Sulaiman to submit his reply.
On that day, Sulaiman also address the court on mechanism of assessing compensation to be given to natives whose NCR were eliminated.

 - Bernama