Aspects of Malayan Colonization of Sarawak

Federal tutelage and betrayal: Sarawak 1965 to 1967

"During the 1965 troubles, Chief Minister (Stephen Kalong) Ningkan took care to emphasise that disputes should be settled in Sarawak without intervention from Kuala Lumpur. While he had been actively cooperating with the Federal Government, particularly on matters of economic development, he was not in sympathy with some federal policies. For example, he did not believe that Malaya's communal policies were necessarily appropriate for Sarawak.

He resisted efforts to speed up Malayanisation of the Sarawak civil service, preferring instead to Borneanise the state administration. Likewise, he resisted increasing pressures to accept Malay as the sole official language for Sarawak in 1967 so as to harmonise with the timetable established for Peninsular Malaysia. Perhaps even more galling to Kuala Lumpur was his statement that he favoured Iban and Chinese as official languages for Sarawak, along with Malay and English. He also objected to federal funds being given for support of Islam and firmly supported the special position of Sarawak as defined in the Malaysia Agreements and the 20 points of the Inter-Governmental Committe Report.

..While the Malayan Alliance leaders tried to influence the outcome of the Sarawak dispute in 1965, that crisis was settled without decisive intervention by Kuala Lumpur. Such was not to be the case one year later. During the interval, relations between Kuching and Kuala Lumpur had become strained, making the latter more determined to engineer the overthrow of the Ningkan government.

When Tunku Abdul Rahman visited Sarawak in February 1966 he tried to revive the idea of a Native Alliance, this time under the guise of a United Malaysian National Organisation for Sarawak. Behind-the-scenes efforts continued for months in an effort to forge a three-party UMNO type coalition to topple Ningkan's government, but such a union was difficult to construct. Pesaka, while keeping on good terms with Kuala Lumpur, was suspicious of a Malay-native union, hoping instead to create a united native movement by absorbing SNAP or providing the leadership for a Pesaka-SNAP merger. Although a Malay party, PANAS had a strong sense of local loyalty and resented political directives from Kuala Lumpur. Furthermore, since it represented many of the more educated Malays from the Kuching area, its members expected to benefit from Ningkan's program of Borneanising the civil service. Only BARJASA seemed to be enthusiatic supporters of Kuala Lumpur's proposed realignment."

Extracted from Gordon P. Means, Malaysian Politics (1970).

It should be noted that the Secretary-General of BARJASA at the time was one Inche Abdul Taib bin Mahmud.