What Do Sarawakians Want?

This posting is a reaction by Sarawak Headhunter to comments made by ampraxius on Malaysia Today's article "Finally, light at the end of the tunnel" by Raja Petra Kamaruddin.

Ampraxius said:

"While it is indeed a good step towards gaining a foot forward in the next GE, I think we need to reconsider the reality of 'points of agreement' between the Borneo states and the federation. We need to ensure that every citizen is represented equally and all casted votes are of the same value. The lower house must be reflective of the population and the upper house must be distributed equally among the states".

You do this and immediately Sarawak's representation will be reduced to 10%. As it is Sarawak is already under the yoke of the Federal BN and its evil State collaborators and exploiters. Do you think that Sarawakians will put up with this even under Pakatan Rakyat? Better for Sarawak to demand independence!

"Additionally I think Malaysians are fed up with the immigration laws between the Borneo states and the peninsular states. This is not about cultural baggage or supremacy, but of practicality. It doesn't make sense when Malaysians are only allowed to be in Sabah and Sarawak for 90 days only while the UK gives them 6 months! Same goes with the work force movement, why do i need a work permit in my own country?"

When you say "Malaysians" I presume you mean "Malayans", since Sarawakian Malaysians are quite happy with it, even if in practice this is only purely psychological, given the reality of abuse of Federal power over the state and its resources in spite of this restriction. While Sarawakians may be "Malaysians", I doubt if many feel that Malaya is their own country for the same reasons. Therefore, don't be so presumptuous to assume that Sarawak is your own country.

PR or rather PKR will ignore this at its own peril. Sarawakians are fed up of submitting to Malayans with colonial mentalities, be they from BN or PR. I have yet to see any Malayan politician give Sarawakians the respect they deserve. Most of the time they are patronising and that includes both BN and PR politicians who don't even bother to try to understand where Sarawakians are coming from.

What Sarawakians want is just a little bit of understanding.

Don't expect Sarawakians to be happy either with BN or PR although we may support PR just for a change.

Putting Jeffery Kitingan in charge of Sarawak (and Sabah) just doesn't send the right message to Sarawakians. It just shows Sarawakians that even PR or Anwar cannot be depended upon to do the right thing.

And what is the right thing?

Autonomy. Yes, that too comes with a little bit of understanding.

After all, that is practically what the Federal BN has given Taib, or doesn't Anwar or PKR trust their Sarawakian counterparts? Unfortunately they may also have a point! If they don't trust or even understand their own counterparts, perhaps its time to cast a wider net to attract better Sarawakians who can be trusted.

But this can only be done if Anwar and PKR spell out what exactly they are willing to concede to Sarawak and Sarawakians, which they haven't done so far, even with state elections just around the corner.

Rotation of the Prime Ministership between Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak would do for a start or do the Malayans think that there are no Sarawakians of sufficient calibre?

Perhaps then Sarawakians may consider doing away with the immigration restrictions and we may all be one nation at last.

Otherwise let Sarawak have its independence, from Malaya and from Taib and his family, cronies and henchmen.

Let Sarawak be a nation of its own.

Or the light at the end of the tunnel might just be that of an oncoming train.

Al Tugauw
Sarawak Headhunter


Here's another reaction from Abdul Hakim Bujang at Sarawak Update (with minor editing by Sarawak Headhunter):

Raja Petra forgot Jeffery Kitingan's RM3billion scandal

posted on December 14th, 2009 @ 10 : 57 pm by Moderator

By Abdul Hakim Bujang

I have sent out an SMS to a PKR leader trying to get his honest response over Dr Jeffery Kitingan's appointment as Chief of Sabah and Sarawak. It has been hours, but no reply.

I am sure he will pretend not to have received it.

I sent it out to him because he was the most open-minded of them all.

I will not waste my money by sending SMS's to others, I am definitely going to get typical Anwar Ibrahim worship replies.

My first question is very simple, how much does Jeffery Kitingan know about Sarawak, or care about Sarawakians or has fought in the name of Sarawak before to warrant him to be the leader of PKR Sarawak?

To me, he is just a desperate political frog that nobody else wanted except Anwar Ibrahim, period.

Then PKR Sarawak Chairman, Wan Zainal Abidin Wan Senusi, once requested me to draft a letter protesting Jeffery Kitingan's admission into PKR.

Do not tell me that Wan Zainal is a very happy man now that Jeffery has been made big boss of PKR Sarawak.

Where was he when PKR founding members fought with blood, sweat and tears in the early formative years? Flying kites with Dominique Ng or main pondok-pondok with Lina Soo? Please tell me.

I am also very confused that Raja Petra, my former boss, now suddenly writes such a positive analysis on Jeffery's appointment that he must have forgotten that he blogged extensively about Jeffery and Pairin's good old days' Yayasan Sabah folly.

Are we saying that by virtue of joing PKR, all the former BN leaders' sins would be deemed cleansed? Will that make the likes of Jimmy Donald and Jawah Gerang holy? And Gabriel Adit a bloody traitor after he quit PKR for refusing to finance his political struggle?

Let's hear from the likes of Daniel Tajem, Baru Bian, See Chee How, Wan Zainal, Hafsah Harun or Baharuddin Mokhsen. I am eagerly waiting. On a personal note, this is just another excuse for Anwar to his Western financiers…

“Ooh, we make a mistake. We forgot that Sarawakians do not like to be under a Sabahan. That’s why we lost this election...”

I presume some guy whoever that may be, is easily pocketing a handsome amount of campaign money because Raja Petra did complain before that the money never trickled down and that PKR leaders were staying in lavish hotels while campaigning in Sarawak.

BTW, these beautiful blogs by Raja Petra no longer exist except in “captured files”:

"If we can remember, Yayasan Sabah was the centre of a RM3 billion – that’s right THREE BILLION RINGGIT – scandal during the time of another two infamous brothers, Pairin and Jeffery Kitingan.

Why are crimes in Sabah always perpetuated by two brothers?

Anyway, the then Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad announced that RM3 billion had been siphoned out of Yayasan Sabah that was headed by Jeffrey at the time Pairin was the Chief Minister and he ordered Price Waterhouse to conduct an audit. Jeffrey was subsequently removed and Musa Aman took over as the new head of Yayasan Sabah.

The audit report was never made public and till today no one knows what happened to the RM3 billion. Yayasan Sabah, which used to be the richest organisation in Malaysia, is now in dire straits. Shouldn’t someone be brought to book for this crime? Why is there a cover-up? After all, RM3 billion is not a paltry sum!"