KUCHING, May 5: With the state election looming less than two years from now, Sarawakians have been called upon to support Sarawak-based parties, namely Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS), to avoid outsiders from taking over the State Legislative Assembly (DUN).
Petra Jaya MP Datuk Seri Fadillah Yusof said if outsider opposition parties take control of the DUN, all Sarawak has been fighting for will be lost, and Sarawakians will suffer.
He said this was proven when the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government took over Putrajaya one year ago and since then, several development projects that have been approved were cancelled.
Apart from that, other state rights might be at risk of being revoked and abolished as mooted by some PH leaders recently, he claimed.
“Imagine if the opposition (PH) takes over our DUN. The first thing they will get rid of is our immigration autonomy, then followed by our Oil Mining Ordinance (OMO).
“People will come in and out of our immigration (sic) as they like. What our Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Tun Openg has been working hard to obtain today, to impose 5 per cent sales tax on our petroleum products, will be gone,” Fadillah said when closing the Santubong Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) Seminar at the Penview Convention Centre here this afternoon.
Earlier, Fadillah spoke about what transpired during the Parliament sitting when the Amendment Bill to Article 1(2) of the Federal Constitution was tabled on April 4 and April 9.
He said the federal legal advisers rejected the state MPs’ proposal to insert “in pursuant to the Malaysia Agreement 1963” into the amendment, which had prompted GPS MPs to abstain from voting for it.
He explained that when the Amendment Bill was tabled, Sarawak MPs were never consulted and brought in for discussions on the details of the amendment.
“In principle, we GPS agreed to amending Article 1(2) of the Federal Constitution. But what the federal government did not inform us was the details of the amendment,” Fadillah said.
He said the amendment should have been more comprehensive and to include Article 160(2) of the Federal Constitution to redefine the Malaysia coalition.
However, legal advisers told GPS that it was too late to propose an amendment to Article 160(2) because a minimum of 14 days was needed.
“Therefore with the very short amount of time that we had, the best we could do was to propose inserting ‘in pursuant to MA63’ to the amendment proposal of Article 1(2),” said Fadillah.
Nonetheless he thanked GPS assemblymen for tabling the motion to debate on MA63 in the DUN sitting earlier last week, where the proposed amendments to the Federal Constitution according to MA63 were unanimously supported by the august House. — DayakDaily
