KOTA KINABALU: Sabah politician Jeffrey Kitingan has upped the ante on Sabah's oil and gas row by accusing the state government of giving up state rights.
The PKR chief for Sabah and Sarawak said he was distressed to learn that the Barisan Nasional state government was downplaying the matter.
"They should take up the advice of former Finance Minister Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah to push for a review of the oil and gas royalty," he said in an interview today.
He said it was disappointing to hear Masidi Manjun, a senior minister in Chief Minister Musa Aman's cabinet say that increasing the oil royalty payable to Sabah "is not an easy issue because it has gone on for too long".
Masidi said the government had to look at it (funds) in totality and not just focus on oil revenue (because) funds to develop Sabah do not depend on oil alone.
Kitingan however said this was naive thinking.
"How could they forego a review on oil royalty in lieu of a supposed increase in federal development allocation to Sabah?
"Ku Li has said the state government can ask for a review, but why is this state government keeping quiet?" he asked.
"The issue is this; the federal development fund is based on development requirements, while oil royalty is what goes direct to the state coffers, and Sabah's leaders must fully comprehend this if they are to give any credence to their positions."
Masidi, who is the state Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister, had sought to justify the 5 percent oil royalty agreement by arguing that the state also had to "look at the wider aspects of the federal-state relationship where there are existing arrangements (where) perhaps Sabah got more than the other states, other than Sarawak...".
But Kitingan said this was nonsense.
Deep fissures
"The argument made by Masidi is not correct ... to give up a review of oil royalty over the allure of a supposed increase in federal development for Sabah is unacceptable and will never be acceptable to right-thinking Sabahans," he warned.
Kitingan, the chairman of CigMa (Common Interest Group Malaysia), an ad hoc apolitical NGO dedicated to “reversing the re-colonialisation of Sabah and Sarawak since 1963”, also said a review on the oil and gas agreement involving Sabah and the federal government, signed in 1976, is necessary because the state needs to know the real situation, for instance how many oil wells does it have and also other pertinent data.
"Are we getting what is due to us? The state government doesn't know. This is the right time to push for a review not only on oil and gas royalty but as well as the state's participation in the industry and business," Kitingan told FMT.
Razaleigh's disclosure last week on the background to the signing over of Sabah's oil and gas rights has come at a sensitive time for the BN-led Sabah government.
Deep fissures have been exposed in Umno by the issue with Masidi scornfully saying that as Razaleigh was the architect of the (oil royalty) agreement between Sabah and the federal government he should have voiced this out when he was still in the government”.
1 comment:
the state government have their own reasons for keeping quite. and do not make this issue as a political problem that only give an advantages to other parties.
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