By Jayden Lisandu
KOTA KINABALU : Former leader of now-defunct United Party (UP), Datuk Yap Pak Leong, was the main proposer for the "40% Sabah's right to revenues derived from the state" which must be included in the IGC Report as condition to agree to form Malaysia, back in 1963.Yap, who is now 89, said the late Donald Stephens then tasked UP to come with proposals to safeguard Sabah on financial matter in the new Federation to be formed with Singapore, Federated Malaya, Sarawak (and Brunei).
UP was then a political party of towkays mainly in Sandakan, he said.
"The late Peter Lo asked me and another to come up with a proposal. I was influenced by a formula Australia had then with its own states, as i studied economics in Australia," he said at his talk on the 40% issue at the Kota Kinabalu Wetland clubhouse in Likas near here today.
"I came up with the 40% condition, and then Peter Lo handed it over to Donald Stephens for agreement in the IGC and then incorporated in the Federal Constitution. That is how it came about," he told some 200 attendees.
According to Yap, Singapore put its condition to 60% state right to revenues and that Singapore was the one to collect the evenues (not the Federal) and later to remit the 40% to the central government.
Sarawak on the other hand, he said, agreed on a certain annual figures for five years, upon which the federal and state governments must review a new quantum every five years.
In 1976, Yap together with Stephens, Harris Salleh and others formed Berjaya and won the state elections that year and all subsequent state elections until 1985 when it lost power to PBS.
Throughout the period Yap was a state cabinet minister.#
Some of the pictures at the talk site :
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