As the elected representative representing Kota Kinabalu, the capital city of Sabah, I hereby call upon all Sabahans and Malaysians to unite in denouncing and condemning devious politicians from the Philippines who have recently played with fire by making dangerous remarks in their Senate inciting their country’s people to renew or continue their baseless claim on Sabah.
It is not only Philippines senator Francis Tolentino who said so, which has been widely reported by Malaysian media. In fact, another senator, Robinhood Padilla also talked about the Philippines’s claim over the Malaysian state of Sabah, during his first privilege speech on August 9. (https://thediplomat.com/2022/08/philippine-senator-tackles-long-standing-sabah-claim/)
Senator Francis Toleration even justified his assertion with the presence of allegedly 750,000 undocumented Filipinos in Sabah. I hereby challenge Senator Francis to urge his country’s President to open up his arms and welcome all these 750,000 undocumented Filipinos and take a bold step to bring them back home to the Philippines. If you love your fellow Filipinos, then bring them home – they never belonged in Sabah in the very first place.
We should resolve the long overdue sizeable undocumented foreigners issue once and for all. With the Senators uncalled remarks on Sabah, the Malaysian Home Ministry and the Sabah Government should immediately cease all steps with the proposed Foreigner Card which would be seen as our toleration with the Philippines’ renewed claim on Sabah.
We should send a strong signal to the Philippines that they have no basis to make any claim whatsoever against Sabah. Full Stop. Enough is enough. All Philippines’ politicians should shut up once and for all and stop beating the dead horse. The issue is long dead with Sabah’s forming of the Federation of Malaysia in 1963.
I hereby demand our Malaysian Federal Government led by Prime Minister Ismail Sabri to immediately take the following stern actions:
- To respond strongly to Philippines government, by summoning the Philippines Ambassador to Malaysia to explain their government’s official stand. The Malaysian Federal Government has to remind our neighbour that the claim by the descendants of the Sultan of Sulu “is in the nature of a private claim” between two private parties and does not involve the government, as pointed out by the spokeswoman for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (https://www.benarnews.org/english/news/philippine/private-claims-08022022133402.html)
- To allow a special motion to be passed at parliament to debate, denounce and condemn the claim by Philippines on Sabah. MPs do not need another close door briefing / discussion hosted by the Federal Government (Wisma Putra, Attorney General and Law Minister). MPs should be allowed to debate the issue in Parliament and that the same be heard loud and clear by our counterparts in the Congress of the Philippines.
- To take proactive legal action to stop the Sulu heirs’ claim by making the necessary counterclaim for abuse of process of court against them. Recently, the self-claimed heirs of Sulu Sultan asked a Dutch court for permission to seize Malaysian assets in the Netherlands, seeking enforcement of a US$15 billion (RM70 billion) arbitration award granted to them against Malaysia’s government. (https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/637580)
It is time that the Malaysian government is stopped from being seen as passive in defending the global assets of the Malaysia, as well as the sovereignty of Malaysia as a country.