Extract from Prof Bob Reece “The relevant, if somewhat ambiguous, recommendation of the Inter-Governmental Committee Report was as follows: It is considered desirable that modifications to the special constitutional arrangements made in respect of the Borneo State should, subject to the safeguard of the consent of the State Government in cases where this is required, be capable of being amended to the extent of bringing the State into line with the present States of the Federation without the requirement that the Federal Bill making such amendment should be supported by the votes not less than two-thirds of the total number of members of the Houses of Parliament. As a consequence of these recommendations, the Malaysian Constitution did not incorporate the safeguards originally required by the North Borneo representatives. This effectively facilitated subsequent amendment of the Federal Constitution in such a way as to remove most of the provisions which originally gave Sabah and Sarawak a special constitutional status within the Federation. Nevertheless, during the negotiations on the Malaysia proposal, the two Borneo states can be seen to have acted as partners, if less than equal partners, with the Malayan and Singapore governments in the discussion of their collective future within the proposed new Federation. The special provisions for North Borneo and Sarawak within the negotiated constitution reflected the reality that their original standing in the Federation was significantly different from that of the constituent states of the Malayan Federation of 1957. Within two years of the signing of the Malaysia Agreement, a series of events commenced which clearly demonstrated that the new Malaysian government in Kuala Lumpur had not accepted the constitutional and political principles implicit in the Agreement relating to the special standing of the two Borneo states, preferring instead to treat the enlarged political entity as a unitary state necessitating strong centralized government control. This can be seen from: (i) the dramatic separation of Singapore from the new Federation of Malaysia in 1965; (ii) the unseating of Sarawak’s first Chief Minister, Datuk Stephen Kalong Ningkan, in 1966; (iii) the overturning and replacement of Tun Mustapha’s USNO-led government in Sabah in 1976; (iv) the creation of new parliamentary seats so as to favor Peninsular Malaysia; (v) the enactment of a number of amendments to the Federal Constitution (vi) relating to the special position of the two Borneo states. - Prof. Bob Reece
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 08:06:34 +0000
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