Dato Sebastian on amendment to Article 1 of the Federal Constitution

suppadmin | October 20, 2016

State Assemblyman for Piasau, Dato’ Sebastian Ting said his willingness to extend an apology to the party members and Sarawakians when the Federation Constitution was amended in 1976 for Sarawak to be reduced to just one of the 13 states, of which the party leaders then did not object to the amendment, would not be raised again by him.

“Things happened in the past which could not be undone, but it is time we move on to more positive issues concerning Sarawak and how to support our Chief Minister to get back certain rights we should have,” he said.

SUPP, he said, gives its unreserved support to our Chief Minister’s call to amend Article 1 of the Federal Constitution in Parliament to its original wording as far as Sarawak is concerned.

Sarawak United Peoples’ Party in many public occasions had been reiterating its stand that all the discrepancies in the Federal Constitution on Sarawak’s Rights from the covenants enshrined in the Inter-Governmental Committee (IGC) Report and the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) shall be fully addressed.

The most critical and fundamental “discrepancy” found in our present Federal Constitution has to be the Article 1 whereby pursuant to the amendment in 1976 through Act A354, Sarawak was downgraded from being Region 2 in the Federation of Malaysia to one of the 13 states in Malaysia.

According to MA63, there shall be no confusion that the Federation of Malaysia is a federation of nations, unlike the former Federation of Malaya which was a unitary state system with a centralisation of governing powers.

This amendment to Article 1 of the Federal Constitution is so fundamental that it has tremendously curtailed the disbursement of Federal Funds for both Sarawak and Sabah to a level of a state, rather than one of the three founding partners. In other words, both Sarawak and Sabah had been short-changed in financial allocations from the Federal Government.

SUPP reiterates that the motion to demand for Article 1 of the Federal Constitution to be amended is to reinstate the original intention of the signatory parties to the MA63 that the formation of Malaysia is an association of equal partners which combines each other’s strength and resources while each individualities to be retained.

SUPP therefore echoes Tan Sri James Masing’s remarks that all MPs from both Sarawak and Sabah shall put aside their own political differences and to rally behind our CM’s call to amend the Federal Constitution so as to restore the constitutional position of both Sarawak and Sabah in the Federation of Malaysia.

At the same time, SUPP would like to take this opportunity to express our concern with the presentation given out by Prof Datin Paduka Datuk Dr. Ramlah Adam in the recent concluded seminar “A Journey To Merdeka: Sarawak in Malaysia” on last Sunday.

She appeared not to understand that Sarawak is not a State like any other states in Malaya but as a Founding State equal partner to the whole of Malaya.

Most people would not know that her own State was not a signatory to the Malaysia Agreement, and as such, not invited to the negotiation table setting up the new Nation in 1963. So how can Perlis be on equal status to Sarawak?

Constitutional scholar, Emeritus Prof Datuk Dr. Shad Saleem Faruqi estimated that individual amendments numbered around 650 had been made towards the Federal Constitution to the extent that the spirit of the original document has been diluted.

Therefore what the Sarawak Government is doing now is to use the Cobbold Commission, IGC, the Malaysia Agreement 1963 and Malaysia Act 1963, that cannot be altered or overridden by the Federal Parliament to claim back the rights and entitlements which rightly belong to Sarawak in the first place with the signing of the Malaysia Agreement 1963.