Kota Kinabalu: The notion that the Home Minister had "restored" or "granted" the citizenship of natives like in the case of Yong Lee Hua is "absolutely ridiculous".
He has no power to grant or take away the citizenship of a person who is a citizen by operation of law, said Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP), Saturday.
To suggest that locals, who apply for recognition of their status as citizens through MyKad applications, should understand that it is a "privilege" and not a "right" is completely wrong, said SAPP Deputy President Datuk Eric Majimbun.
In fact, he said it is the law that determines whether a local Sabahan is a citizen and it was agreed in the 1963 Malaysia Agreement and the Federal Constitution that all Sabahans are citizens.
"When Sabah formed Malaysia in 1963 together with Sarawak, Malaya and Singapore, it was expressly agreed that all Sabahans, whether native Sabahans or otherwise, shall be automatically entitled to citizenship of the Federation.
"This was inserted into the Malaysia Agreement and the amended Federal Constitution. Sabahans like Yong are, therefore, citizens by operation of law," he said.
"Even if a local Sabahan did not bother to obtain an identity card, he or she is still nonetheless a citizen by operation of law. After all, the identity card regulations do not govern citizenship status of a person.
"Identity cards originated as an emergency measure adopted during the Communist insurgency to weed out and identify subversives," he said in a statement.
Since then it has become a useful and convenient identity document.
The Sepanggar MP said for genuine citizens their status of citizenship cannot depend on the whim and fancy of the National Registration Department, if they decide to replace their MyKad with a MyPR card.
Majimbun said it was only where non-Malaysians were concerned that the Minister, Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar, was right when saying that the application for PR or citizenship was a privilege.
"However, for Malaysians, it is an absolute right to obtain a MyKad that denotes citizenship," he said, commenting on the statement by the Home Minister on Friday.
Syed Hamid was reported as saying that "he had directed NRD to make it clear that applying for PR status and citizenship were not a right but a privilege."
He had earlier said that though there were 30,000 applications involving locals, he had decided to grant citizenship to Yong because it was a deserving case.
- Daily Express, Sabah
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