By DayakDaily Team
KUCHING, Oct 31: The PETRONAS Twin Towers should be renamed ‘Sabah and Sarawak’, in recognition of the vital role these Borneo States and their resources have played in building Malaysia, suggested Saya Anak Sarawak (SAS) founder Peter John Jaban.
While acknowledging former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad as the architect of modern Malaysia, he criticised Dr Mahathir’s approach, which had redirected development funds from the Borneo States to Peninsular Malaysia.
“His mega projects—Cyberjaya, Langkawi, the PETRONAS Twin Towers, Sepang International Circuit, and others costly ventures— have only benefited a select few, leaving some of the other states across Peninsular Malaysia to fend for themselves, just as Sarawak and Sabah have had to,” he said in a statement today.
His comments were made in response to Dr Mahathir’s recent suggestion that Sarawak, now a high-income region, should help poorer states in Malaysia.
On this, Peter, who is also Sarawak Association for People’s Aspirations (SAPA) publicity and information chief, argued that, at age 99, Dr Mahathir appears to be shifting blame for his failures onto the very regions his administration sidelined.
“Sarawak has reached high-income status in spite of his policies, not because of them. But now the reality is laid bare.
“After years of being treated as the ‘stepchildren’ of Malaysia, the Borneo States are finally standing on their own two feet. We hope that Tun Mahathir will stay at home to digest just how the States he dubbed as lazy, slow and greedy as recently as 2018 have pulled off this transformation.”
Peter added that Sarawak is happy to contribute to the Federal coffers through the proper channels, as it has done, above and beyond reasonable expectations, since the formation of the nation.
“We simply hope the current Federal government will be better at equitable allocation than Tun did,” he urged.
Despite Sarawak’s high-income status, Peter reminded that numerous infrastructure projects under federal jurisdiction, such as schools, hospitals, and roads, remain woefully underfunded.
“Sarawak has worked hard to fulfill these needs. We hope that all our policymakers do the same. Perhaps then they will come to see that strong leaders in a properly Federalised system of government, which respects the role of each state, might be the future of this nation instead of the racially-based, centralised system currently in place. So stop asking from us,” he concluded. — DayakDaily
