KUCHING, March 2: The Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) State government should seize the occasion to demand Sarawak’s independence from the Malaysia government while the latter has been sued by the descendants of the Sultanate of Sulu for unpaid cession money over Sabah.
Parti Bumi Kenyalang (PBK) president Voon Lee Shan said the Sarawak government, on its own terms, should not wait further to take legal action against the Federal government for what he claimed to be a “breach of the terms and conditions of the Malaysia Agreement (MA63)”.
“Sarawak and Sabah were once colonies of United Kingdom and Malaya became the successor of the United Kingdom after Sarawak and Sabah were handed to Malaya to enlarge her territories to form Malaysia.
“This should be used by the Sarawak government to make the Federal government of Malaysia liable for damages, loss of revenues, oil and gas and all other rights that Sarawak had suffered caused by the breaches,” he said.
Yesterday (March 2), it was reported that the descendants of the last Sulu Sultan had filed a case against the Malaysia government in a French court, claiming at least USD14.92 billion (RM62.59) billion for violating the 1878 agreement signed by Sultan Jamal Al Alam, Baron de Overbeck and the British North Borneo Company’s Alfred Dent.
It was noted that Malaysia had stopped paying the Sultanate’s heirs their annual RM5,300 cession money since 2013 following the Lahad Datu armed incursion.
The Sultanate of Sulu continues to lay claim to Sabah which it obtained from Brunei as a gift and later leased to the British North Borneo Company for an annual payment of 5,000 Malayan dollars then, which increased to 5,300 Malayan dollars in 1903.
Spanish arbitrator Gonzalo Stampa of the Paris court had issued the arbitration award and ruled that the 1878 treaty constituted a commercial “international private lease agreement”. — DayakDaily
