It is important that the general
public waits until the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) completes its
work and announces its findings before it draws conclusions about
the motives behind the issuance of Malaysian identity documents to foreigners
in the past. Only then would people in both Sabah and Peninsular Malaysia
have a clear picture of what really happened, and why.
If statements by individual witnesses
are viewed as the entire truth, we may fall into the trap of subscribing
to partial accounts of a complex reality. After all, the statements
issued by some witnesses on the third day of the Inquiry were contradicted
by subsequent testimonies on the fourth and fifth days. This is what one
should expect in an open and honest investigation.
Establishing a Royal Commission on
such a contentious and controversial issue which has been at the core of
Sabah politics for more than three decades was an act of
tremendous courage on the part of the Najib Government. It demonstrates a
readiness to embrace the truth however painful it may be. It is only when the
whole truth is known that the multireligious and multi-cultural people of Sabah
will be rid of misgivings, doubts and suspicions which have sullied their
hitherto harmonious inter-ethnic ties.
To enable the truth to set the people
free, they should not overlook a critical dimension in the issuance of
Malaysian identity documents and indeed, the conferment of citizenship upon
foreigners. A significant portion of those who sought refuge in Sabah from
the seventies onwards comprised the tragic victims of a protracted war in
Mindanao which has just ended. This is the humanitarian aspect of
citizenship which a civilised state must uphold if it is genuinely
committed to compassion and justice.
There are other angles to citizenship
which were among the principal considerations in the accommodation of recently
domiciled Chinese and Indian communities in Malaya (Peninsular Malaysia) on the eve of
Merdeka in 1957. Their role in the crucial tin and rubber sectors of the
economy, the threat posed by the largely Chinese communist insurgency,
and the need for inter-ethnic cooperation in the drive towards Merdeka
were some of the principal reasons why a million Chinese and Indians were
conferred citizenship in the twinkling of an eye. As Dr. Mahathir Mohamad
has correctly observed, the UMNO elite was even prepared to set aside
conventional citizenship norms in order to bring the new Malayans abroad.
This was in stark contrast to the approach adopted by leaders in other similarly
divided societies --- societies in which an indigenous-non-indigenous
dichotomy had developed as a result of colonial rule such as Indonesia and
Burma (Myanmar) --- where the rules of citizenship were stringently
applied so as to ensure the assimilation of the foreign component.
In Malaysia, on the other hand,
accommodation of the other changed the landscape drastically. The people who had given
the land its identity through Malay Sultanates that have existed for hundreds of years
were now relegated to a community among communities. In other words, by
extending citizenship to the Chinese and Indians on such generous terms,
the very character of the nascent nation had changed. Adjusting
Malay rights arising from this consciousness of a Malay land with the
interests of the non-Malays through integration via common citizenship in
a larger Malaysian nation has remained themost fundamental challenge of the
last 55 years.
In a sense, Sabah, by conferring
citizenship upon the migrants from its neighbourhood, in the eighties and
nineties, has also experienced a parallel, though different,
transformation. The non-Muslim Bumiputra component of the population which
was the largest segment of a multi-religious society at the time of the state’s
incorporation into Malaysia in 1963, lost its lead position to the Muslim
Bumiputra component. The angst and anxiety this has created in various
circles is understandable and should be addressed with much empathy.
Harmonising the interests of these
two segments with the non-Muslim, non-Bumiputra elements, calls for astute statesmanship and
dexterity. In this regard, Sabah is fortunate to have as one of its
foremost leaders a person like Tan Sri Joseph Pairin Kittingan whose political
maturity and wisdom have helped to sustain an appreciable degree of
interreligious and inter-cultural peace.
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