Barisan Nasional Ministers and MPs should not fail Sabahans and Malaysians a third time and should demand that the Joseph Pairin Review Committee on the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry on the Illegal Immigrants in Sabah (RCIIIS) should complete its review and make public its report before the end of the year, so that the new year of 2015 can begin with the serious resolution of the 40-year problem which had changed the political demography in Sabah as well as created unprecedented socio-economic problems for Sabahans as to make native Sabahans foreigners in their own land.
The BN Ministers and MPs had earlier failed miserably in being unable to rise to the occasion in the middle of last month to demand that the Report of the RCIIIS should be tabled in Parliament before the end of the 28-day budget meeting of Dewan Rakyat on Nov. 27 so that there could be a full-scale parliamentary debate.
The first failure of the BN Ministers and MPs was to allow the Prime Minister and the Cabinet to sit on the Report of the RCIIIS for more than six months doing nothing, as a parliamentary answer to my question revealed that the RCIIIS Report was submitted to the Federal Government on May 14.
Can the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, or any Barisan Nasional Minister or MP from Sabah enlighten the public as to what was done by the authorities with regard to the RCIIIS Report in the past six-and-a-half months since it was submitted to Putrajaya.
Did the Federal Government just sat on the Report and twiddled its thumbs, doing nothing, until it is made public tomorrow?
I do not think I am the only one to have the queasy and sickening feeling that despite the release of the Report of the RCIIIS tomorrow, it will be the latest in a “merry-go-round” passing-the-buck game in a protracted and humongous problem which had been going on for four decades, not only getting nowhere, but getting from bad to worse!
I have been trying to contact the Chief Secretary, Tan Sri Ali Hamsa or someone in the Prime Minister’s Department to arrange for a set of the RCIIIS Report tomorrow, but to no avail.
My staff was pushed from pillar to post from one department to another, as nobody seems to know who is in charge, until finally to be informed that all the three officials involved in the RCIIIS had gone to Kota Kinabalu for the public launch of the RCIIIS Report tomorrow.
This is not a very impressive display of efficiency and competence of the Prime Minister’s Department in Putrajaya, which probably holds the world record as the Prime Minister’s Office in any country with the largest annual budget.
The Chief Secretary should ensure that all MPs who are interested should be given a full set of the RCIIIS report.
Furthermore, the Prime Minister should be prepared to summon an emergency meeting of Parliament in the last few days of the year to demonstrate the Barisan Nasional’s seriousness and political will to resolve the four-decade long problem of illegal immigrants in Sabah so that Sabah and Malaysia can begin on a new page in dealing with the problem from the first day of the new year of 2015.