Sat, 20 Nove 2010
By Queville To
Free Malaysia Today
KOTA KINABALU: DAP is calling for a Royal Commission of Inquiry to investigate how Sabah, which was once a rich state, had crashed to a point that it was now the “poorest” in Malaysia and is “likely to stay that way for a considerable length of time”.
In making the call, party adviser Lim Kit Siang also asked how the government had allowed the state to become the poorest in the country if there was “inclusive growth”.
Lim was commenting on a World Bank Report last week which noted that 40% of Malaysia’s poor were centred in Sabah, making it the poorest state in the country.
The embarrassing disclosure has since sent state officials helter-skelter looking for arguments to counter the report, which has triggered an uproar against the state government.
Lim said the exhaustive report has exposed the lie that there was “inclusive growth” in the country.
“Sabah should not have become the poorest state… it was once one of the richest states before entering into Malaya, together with Sarawak, to form Malaysia, 47 years ago.
“As emphasised in the official report, ‘inclusive growth’, means benefiting every Sabahan and Malaysian and not just a handful of people. It has been the key objective of the government of Malaysia since Independence.
“This (report) is an indictment of the government that after 47 years it has failed to fulfil its promises to the people of Sabah,” he told reporters here yesterday.
Eradication on wrong track
Lim said it was alarming that the World Bank’s Human Development Sector had found that “Sabah is not only the poorest state in Malaysia, but is likely to stay that way for a considerable length of time given current efforts on poverty eradication”.
“This means that Sabah will not only be the poorest state in Malaysia but will continue to be the poorest unless there is a total change in policy,” he said, adding that the economic plan in Sabah was neither balanced nor fair nor equitable nor sustainable for all Sabahans.
Lim said that though the government might have tried for years to eradicate poverty, it was obviously on the wrong track as the report showed that Sabahans would continue to struggle to make ends meet, especially those living in the rural areas.
He said that a Royal Commission of Inquiry should be formed to further probe on whether the guarantees given to Sabah and Sarawak in 1963 when they agreed to establish Malaysia had been fulfilled.
“Both Sabah and Sarawak could be as developed as Peninsular Malaysia. That was what they had hoped but it is clear now that the hope has not been fulfilled.”
Lim said that since DAP alone could not force the setting up of such a commission, it is urging all Sabah BN Members of Parliament to give their full support to determine why Sabah has remained in the backwaters.
Also present at the press conference yesterday were Sabah DAP chairman-cum-Kota Kinabalu MP Hiew King Cheu, Sri Tanjung assemblyman Jimmy Wong and DAP national publicity assistant secretary Teo Nie Ching.