The United Borneo Front recently organised an Inter-Party Dialogue & Leadership Seminar in Kota Kinabalu on 5 March 2011. Below is the text of the speech delivered by Daniel John Jambun on behalf of the Common Interest Group Malaysia (CigMa), one of many organisations that attended in support of the Borneo Agenda.
Greetings.
Without much further ado, I will delve immediately into the subject proper of my talk today. Please bear with me. I will keep my address as brief as possible so that we may all ponder on the essential points that I am trying to make.
I have 11 major aspects to put before you today as Food for Thought and you may want to deliberate on them later among yourselves or ask me some questions at the end of my address.
As you all know, the World Bank confirmed late last year that Sabah and Sarawak had achieved the dubious distinction of bring the poorest and second poorest states in Malaysia. This is a figure derived at by using the figures of the Economic Planning Units of the Sabah and Sarawak Governments and the Economic Planning Unit in Putrajaya.
Forty per cent of Malaysia's poor, according to the World Bank, are in Sabah. This means that almost half of the poor people in Malaysia are in Sabah.
The poverty figures should come as no surprise since both Sabah and Sarawak are actually colonies of Peninsular Malaysia. More on that shortly.
Just contrast the economic development of Sabah and Sarawak with the status of neighbouring Brunei which stayed out from the Malaysian Federation at the last minute in 1963 and Singapore which left after two years in 1965.
By the end of last year, the Singapore economy at US$ 210 billion GDP was bigger than the entire Malaysian economy by US$ 5 billion. This is indeed a shameful state of affairs and one that calls for the leadership in Putrajaya to admit that they are an incompetent and corrupt lot and beyond any redemption in this life or the next. They should head for the nearest toilet bowl to collectively dip their faces. It would no longer do for Putrajaya to continue in a state of denial. Most of the much smaller Malaysian economy vis–vis Singapore is concentrated in Peninsular Malaysia.
Did Sabah and Sarawak agree to federate together with Malaya and Singapore in 1963 to end up at the bottom of the dung heap along with the marginalized and disenfranchised elements of the Third Force in Peninsular Malaysia?
No comments:
Post a Comment