JEFFREY WANTS NEW POLITICAL MODEL

By : JOE FERNANDEZ

SABAH strongman, Datuk Dr Jeffrey Kitingan has begun working on a “New Political Model (NPM) for Malaysia under which anyone can be prime minister of the country”.

His concept paper on the NPM is expected to be ready within the next two months during which time he will be on leave from PKR.

He has already declined nomination on Oct 16 for any party post in the ongoing PKR elections and had said that he would not be taking up any position in the party.

“This time I am not going on a sabbatical like the last time (late last year),” said Jeffrey in recalling a previous occasion when he had expressed his unhappiness with PKR. “So, don’t read anything into my leave or link it with the party. I need the time off this time to also attend to some personal and family matters.”

He was speaking last night on the sidelines of a birthday function, his 62nd, in Kampung Minintod in the outskirts of Kota Kinabalu.

The press was not present. He had not initially planned to inform the press about the NPM “at this juncture but perhaps this could be a teaser”.

Jeffrey’s proposed NPM, in a nutshell, would also be designed to roll back the spread of the extreme racial polarisation in Peninsular Malaysia to Sabah and Sarawak over the years.

“We cannot deny the fact that Peninsular Malaysia is the pits when it comes to race relations,” said Jeffrey. “If we don’t do something about it, Sabah and Sarawak will be the unfortunate victims too. Future generations will suffer.”

He thinks that “some people in Peninsular Malaysia unlike us” (Sabah, Sarawak), have a problem with the Indians, Chinese and non-Muslims and would “continue to do so”.

Logical conclusion

Jeffrey dismissed the idea that the NPM was “a sudden development on his part”, saying that he had already mentioned his “unfinished business” at a press conference on Oct 16. He had then thanked all those who nominated him for the post of vice-president which he currently holds by appointment.

The “unfinished business”, he said, was mainly about the issue of Sabah and Sarawak rights within the Federation of Malaysia.

“If we take the issue of Sabah and Sarawak rights to its logical conclusion, then the issue of the prime minister’s post and race relations must also be included in the discussion,” said Jeffrey.

“We cannot continue to be part of a federation where we are deliberately denied the opportunity to occupy the prime minister’s post and where race relations are worsening by the day.”

Being denied the prime minister’s post or being discriminated on account of one’s race, said Jeffrey, is not something that Sabah and Sarawak bargained for when they agreed to help form the new Federation of Malaysia on Sept 16, 1963, that is, 16 days after both states became independent on Aug 31, 1963.

He said that no one, under the Federal Constitution, can deny anyone the right to be prime minister of the country “but the practical reality is that current political models don’t open up the PM’s post to every citizen”.

“I have already completed a memorandum on the issue of Sabah and Sarawak rights,” said Jeffrey without saying who will receive it. “Now, it’s time to work on an addendum to the memorandum, that is, the NPM, for submission to the people.”

He noted that Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak is also flogging the idea of a NPM but expects nothing new to come out of this initiative.

“Najib’s rationale for a NPM is to supplement his so-called New Economic Model,” he said. “As he has stated, UMNO’s old style politics of development and its pre-occupation with racist rant no longer works.”

New reality

Jeffrey doesn’t expect Najib’s NPM to bring “new hope to Sabah and Sarawak”. Instead, he sees Najib’s NPM as “more of the same thing that the people have come to expect from UMNO since independence”.

UMNO and the Barisan Nasional (BN), he said, are failing models “since Malay-majority seats in Parliament and the state assemblies can no longer be taken for granted by the ruling elite”.

He thinks that it won’t be an easy task for Najib’s NPM to cope with the new reality that all ethnic-based seats in Malaysia, including Malay, are slipping from the hands of the BN.

At the same time, the Indian and Chinese communities in Malaysia and the urban dwellers are abandoning the BN, added Jeffrey.

“UMNO could of course open up to the Indians and Chinese but it would never do it even if not doing so would kill the party eventually.”

“The ruling Malay pre-occupation in Peninsular Malaysia has also always been with the Indian and Chinese communities,” said Jeffrey. “They are more concerned about bottling up these two communities and denying an Indian or Chinese from ever becoming prime minister of the country.”

Jeffrey thinks that Najib’s NPM would be designed around the increasingly discredited concept of ketuanan Melayu (Malay political supremacy through one political platform).

New form of domination

For Sabah and Sarawak, he said, the last “tuan” (British colonialist) left on Aug 31, 1963 and the pre-occupation in the two states has been “to reverse their re-colonisation by Malaya (Peninsular Malaysia)”.

The issue of re-colonisation, disenfranchisement and statelessness is being addressed in his memorandum on Sabah and Sarawak rights, he said.

He denies the suggestion that his proposed NPM would be a new form of domination designed to place Sabah and Sarawak in the thick of the political action in the country.

“No one can levy the charge of political domination or colonialism when a member of a minority community becomes prime minister of the country,” said Jeffrey.

Under Jeffrey’s NPM, “the country will graduate from having only Malay prime ministers to one where we would have a Dusun, Iban, Indian or others as well in the post”.

Jeffrey disclosed that he once asked then prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad “why a Sabahan could not be prime minister of the country”. Mahathir’s answer, according to him, was: “A Sabahan cannot be prime minister of the country. A Malaysian can.”

Jeffrey’s mission with his NPM, it seems, would be to determine whether Sabahans and Sarawakians are also accepted as Malaysians by the ruling elite and people in Peninsular Malaysia.

Jeffrey did not say whether his proposed NPM would find expression through the opposition alliance, Pakatan Rakyat, which has since announced a Common Policy Framework (CPF) to put it on the road to Putrajaya. It’s also not known whether the NPM would be an addendum from Sabah and Sarawak to the CPF.

The CPF had no input from Sabah and Sarawak but merely focused on merging the separate election manifestos of PKR, PAS and the DAP into one framework.