Shafie puts foot in mouth about Sabah oil and basic politics

By Daniel John Jambun

KOTA KINABALU: In Datuk Shafie Apdal’s comment about the opposition’s promise to give 20% royalty for its oil if it was voted to power, he stressed only two important points, that is, Sabah shouldn’t take 20%“because it needs to share its wealth” and “the opposition should not makes promises that causes rift among the people.”

 

I have one thing to say about what he said: these are some of the dumbest and most idiotic statements we have heard in the political history of Sabah. It is no better than when Datuk Salleh Said Keruak said the people should blame themselves for the increase in illegal immigrants in Sabah, or when Tun Mahathir said the illegals in Sabah should be given citizenships because they can speak Bahasa Malaysia!

 

How ridiculous of Shafie to say that Sabah needs to share it wealth with non-oil producing states in Malaysia. First of all the oil belong to us, but 95% is being taken away. All we are asking for is this 95% being taken away be reduced to 80%. That’s still a lot of sharing to satisfy Shafie. Strangely, he admitted he himself wants 20% royalty but at the same time said he is happy with 5%! What? He rather sees Sabah remain poor, rather then get a little bit more of what belong to us in the first place.

 

Isn’t it ridiculous to reject an increase in oil royalty on the ground that we need to share our good fortune with the non-oil states? If we believe in this twisted economic logic then we should share whatever we have – everything including wealth as well as problems. Why not share our misfortunes as well, such as our highest poverty rate, lack of developments, illegal immigrants and high prices of basic commodities? Doesn’t Shafie realize that with just 20% oil royalty, we can already solve most of these problems? Is he saying that we decided to be part of Malaysia so that the Federal Government can take away what we have and cause us to be the poorest state? No, we formed Malaysiawith the promises of progress, development and wealth, not this poverty which Shafie seems to prefer. Being part of the Federal Government, Shafie is also an accomplice in the scheme to strip Sabah of its wealth, and he is admitting he prefers it that way!

 

The other silly thing Shafie said is that the opposition is making this promise to cause a rift among the people. Is Shafie still a greenhorn in politics, or is he now behaving like the typical Umno leaders who are telling the people that we shouldn’t speak up the truth because “it causes disunity among the people”? Has he forgotten that we are living in a democratic society and now thinks we are in an autocratic regime? How stupid to say that we shouldn’t say anything in politics to cause rifts among the people! This is what we politicians have been doing since day one –to speak the truth and to expose lies of the other party to educate the people, and now we have “caused a rift among the people” (memecah-belahkan rakyat), that is to cause them to go into at least two camps, the ruling coalition and the opposition! Is Shafie against this? Does Shafie prefer it if we don’t have any election and everyone joins the BN? Will that be good for us, or for Shafie, in the long run? Ther we don’t need politics, we don’t need elections of parliament!

 

What I suspect is that Shafie is very worried that the real rift is happening in the BN. Many BN members have long started to love the promise of 20% royalty and had left the BN to support the opposition, causing a rift among the BN members (not among the people), because as Shafie says, who doesn’t want 20% royalty?

 

I would advise Shafie to refrain from making childish statements in the future as if we the rakyat are so uneducated, backward and unable to think intelligently.