By DayakDaily Team
KUCHING, May 10: Senator Robert Lau has criticised former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad for his “inconsistent” stance on oil and gas resource agreements involving Sarawak, accusing the veteran leader of applying principles selectively to suit his narrative.
Responding to Dr Mahathir’s recent remarks that any deal on Sarawak’s oil and gas must go through Parliament rather than being decided in “backroom negotiations,” Lau questioned whether that same principle was followed in 1976 when Sarawak’s rights to its oil and gas were allegedly signed away without proper legislative approval.
“My question is this: did this principle apply when the then Chief Minister of Sarawak, Tun Abdul Rahman Yakub, was pressured into signing a one-page letter in June 1976, effectively surrendering Sarawak’s oil and gas rights to PETRONAS?” he asked in a statement today.
He pointed out that the agreement—brokered under Dr Mahathir’s government through Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah—was never tabled in Parliament, not endorsed by the Sarawak Assembly, nor presented to the Sarawak Cabinet.
“Does Dr Mahathir now agree that this letter lacks legitimacy since it was never endorsed?” Lau pressed.
He likened the situation to a child being deceived into giving away their inheritance under false promises, and later being told they must seek the deceiver’s consent to reclaim what was taken.
Lau also took aim at Dr Mahathir’s claim that Sarawak was impoverished under British rule, accusing the former prime minister of distorting history to deflect responsibility from decades of resource extraction under the federal government.
“Britain took all their money? I urge Dr Mahathir to support such claims with facts,” he said, arguing that while Malaya was indeed heavily exploited for its tin and rubber wealth, Sarawak’s experience under British rule was vastly different.
“It is estimated that hundreds of billions of pounds were repatriated from Malaya over more than a century. British companies owned much of the industry, and profits were sent back to the UK—until you, Dr Mahathir, led the ‘Dawn Raid’ in 1981 to regain ownership of key British-held assets on the London Stock Exchange, shortly after becoming Malaysia’s fourth Prime Minister.
“Sarawak was a British colony for less than 17 years (1846 to Sept 16, 1963) and its oil and gas were not meaningfully developed then. The real exploitation came after Malaysia was formed—and continued under your leadership,” he added.
Lau asserted that massive profits from Sarawak’s petroleum resources have overwhelmingly benefited Peninsular Malaysia, particularly during Dr Mahathir’s tenure as Prime Minister from 1981 to 2003, when PETRONAS operated without transparent oversight.
“So I ask again: Did Dr Mahathir seek the consent of the Malaysian Parliament for this extraction? The answer is clearly no. PETRONAS’ accounts are not open to public scrutiny, and its operations lack transparency.
“By 2014, the cumulative value of petroleum extracted from Sarawak had reached RM1 trillion. Yet Sarawak still lags behind in infrastructure and development,” he said.
Lau concluded by accusing the federal government, under Dr Mahathir’s leadership, of replicating colonial-era exploitation—only this time under a different flag.
“Yes, Sarawak was under British rule, but it did not suffered in the way you alleged. We suffered and continue to now what Malaya suffered when under colonial rule. Can we not see that the same pattern of exploitation continues—only now it is not the British, but our own federal system that perpetuates it?
“The British didn’t build a ‘Twin Tower’ in London with Malaya’s rubber and tin wealth. But we built one in Kuala Lumpur, using oil and gas profits from Sarawak and Sabah. Perhaps it should be renamed the ‘Petros Twin Towers’—to reflect where that wealth truly came from and the promises made to Sarawak and Sabah that remain unfulfilled,” Lau suggested. — DayakDaily
