DAP Sabah kicked off a series of Janji Ditepati public hearings starting in Kota Kinabalu on Monday to seek feedback from the people of Sabah and see if the promises made by the BN during its 49 year rule have indeed been fulfilled or if the government’s Merdeka slogan is yet another in a long series of broken promises by the BN to the people of Sabah.
The last time a series of such public hearings were held was in 1962 when the Commission of Enquiry for North Borneo and Sarawak (better known as the Cobbold Commission) sought public feedback in Sabah and Sarawak for a period of 2 ½ months. Indeed, the Cobbold Commission, which was appointed in January 1962, took five months to complete and was submitted to the British on the 21st of June 1962. The final report was released on the 1st of August, 1962. The Commission was chaired by the former Governor of the Bank of England, Lord Cameron Cobbold, with a four member Commission namely Wong Pow Nee, Chief Minister of Penang, Mohammed Ghazali Shafie, Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Malaya, Anthony Abell, former Governor of Sarawak and David Watherston, former Chief Secretary of Malaya.
In contrast, it took Najib 6 months to announce the members of the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Illegal Immigrants in Sabah and to come up with the Terms of Reference. And even the Terms of Reference may have been delayed further if not for the departure of two prominent BN Members of Parliament from Sabah. Three weeks later, concerned Sabahans are still waiting for any signs of life that the RCI has started work.
For a Prime Minister who is overseeing a Government Transformation Program that is supposed to make the government more efficient and responsive, it is ironic that the Najib premiership appears to be more inefficient and incompetent compared to the governance of 50 years ago in 1962 as demonstrated by the Cobbold Commission who were operating in a time without the convenience of modern technology.
Will the RCI on Illegal Immigrants be another meaningless Public Relations exercise by the BN similar to the RCI on Police Reform, the RCI on the VK Lingam video clip and the RCI into the Teoh Beng Hock case?
Will Najib call for the next general election without even allowing for the RCI on Illegal Immigrants to start, let along to be completed, so as to avoid the public spotlight on the many problems that such an RCI would unveil, including strong and indisputable evidence that a significant number of illegal immigrants have been included in the electoral roll?
I challenge Najib to assure the people of Sabah that he will not call for the next general election until the RCI on Illegal Immigrants in Sabah has completed its work and that he will take the necessary steps based on the findings to ensure the illegal immigrants who have been wrongly issued ICs and included in the electoral roll will be removed from the electoral roll to ensure a clean and fair elections.
The real problem is that MOST Sabahan expected UMNO/BN broken promises – and do NOTHING about it – its how UMNO/BN can be so comfortable of their continue colonisation of Sabah…
The real intellectual question is that how can Sabah proud tribalism culture tolerate such a state of colonialism, a poor one at that. You would think that by now, in this century, traditional societies like in Sabah, won’t fall for the same old traps and tricks that marginalised the Indians of America, the aborigines of Australia and Indians of South America? But yet they are still doing it. Their leaders are castrated to hand over subjugation to UMNO/BN and fail to seize opportunities of independence and self-reliant, giving the same old excuses and behaving self-destructively as the Indians and aborigines did..
“….Sabahans are still waiting for any signs of life that the RCI has started work…..”
Malaysians in general and Sabahans in particular, do not hold your breadth waiting for this to take off.
Remember the PKFZ and the “special high powered comittee” to be chaired by the then Chief Secretary? The BN Govt proposed this committee to replace the other investigation being pushed by Ong Tee Keat and which was threatening to open a huge can of worms. Now the former Chief Secretary has retired and this “special committee” has not published a single word of its “investigation”.
The same goes for the independent audit firm to investigate the NFC scandal announced by the DPM when the NFC scandal was exposed. Not a peep since.
This Sabah RCI will go the same way. Any such so called “investigation” announced by the BN Govt will end up with nothing. They are nothing more than a red herring hoping to appease the rakyat in the short term and then conveniently swept under the carpet and hopefully, the people will forget about them eventually. The truth simply cannot be told. BN will be buried under these truths.
Can’t Sabah State itself do its own investigations? Surely there are enough evidence and information within the State itself that it can dig up to confirm that there is indeed a lot of hanky-panky that had been going on.
I am indeed very surprised that after a few decades, there have been no whistle-blower(s) coming forward to provide the inside story on this important matter or on any other hanky-panky that had taken place over the years.
The slow pace of action to bring RCI on illegal immigrants in Sabah to past is understood – how can BN open the can of worms behind PROJECT IC prior to GE13?
Pakatan is also good at giving empty promises….Apa jadi 16th Sep’ 2008 untuk tubuh kerajaan persekutuan? Janji-janji kerajaan negeri Pulau Pinang sudah dipenuhi ke? Always cakap tak serupa bikin….
Well…it is a lot harder to beat opposition if DAP had picked another chief minister…..
But Pakatan didn’t brag about any “janji ditepati” … they know that their promises are still in progress any the federal government is using all their machinery to block Pakatan whenever Pakatan wants to implement their promises such as local government election.
It is BN that is cakap tak serupa bikin, what is 1Malaysia when non-UNMO/BN are still marginalised.
What is janji ditepati when Najib’s promise to bring justice to TBH’s death but after years there is still no news.
What is janji ditepati when Najib’s reform of the election is all talk no action.
What is janji ditepati when Najib’s pledge to wipe off corruption but every year Auditor-General reports shows purchases were made at inflated prices
The failure of 16/9/2008 only shows that Pakatan does not depend on katak to form the government unlike BN. And this in consistence with Pakatan’s stance on party-hopping.
There was once, not so long ago, we had a Mr MOU who signed MOUs everywhere. Nothing ever came out of any of it. Today, people say, he is a bankrupt.
Today, we have a Mr IOU who goes about making statements and promises but the people are still waiting for him to keep his promises. Maybe his IOUs are really worthless, cannot be cashed at all. Well, we hope he will not become a bankrupt soon.
Somehow, I am inclined to associate the Sabahans with those islanders located to their East. I remember reading an article by an American Reporter, after Marcos was chased out, that the country would never ever changed if the 25 families that he named, took turn to preside over that nation! Those families may pretend to shout over all their agenda but the end result is still the same: Plundering of the nation! It certainly looks like that we have trodden the same path for the last 30 years, and if we continue we will suffer the same fate. The ‘business as usual’ is so entrenched that further continuation will surely send us to Timbuktu! It is hoped that Sabahans will make use of the momentum being heard and already put in motion all around the nation to decide for a better future which they owe it to their children, their grand children and their grand children’s children………… In the history of the human race, no nation has ever survived through corruption and wantonness; Malaysian can’t be the exception!
“Pakatan is also good at giving empty promises….” Cintarambutan
Go back to your English class, Cintarambutan. You don’t start a commentary by openly admitting that BN is good at giving empty promises. You’re not worth the RM 200 that BN pays you to make a posting.
Wait wait wait. There is a word for janji tak ditepati. It is “tipu”.