ALTHOUGH some in Sarawak have in recent weeks been whipping up quite a storm in a teacup, galvanising popular sentiments of pride in the state — despite divergent agendas — and even resorting to potentially ugly “anti-orang Malaya” diatribes, it is important for all concerned not to lose the forest for the trees.
As Greece and almost everyone else in the European Union have discovered, whatever befalls one affects everyone else for good or ill. We are in this together in a federation called Malaysia and not in a zero-sum game wherein one wins at the expense of someone else.
A win-win solution to whatever ails this country — whether real or imaginary — can only be found through serious and sober discussions and negotiations, and whipping up popular passions will only complicate matters.
It is deeply ironic that resentments directed against the Federal Government or Peninsular Malaysia generally come at a time when Sarawak (and Sabah) has never been more strongly represented at the highest levels of government. This is too suspiciously opportunistic politically and does nothing to further national integration.
In any case, Sarawak has never really been at the periphery even before the last general election. National policies of any importance have always been the products of consultations between state and federal administrations which, since 1974, all belonged in Barisan Nasional.
It actually goes much deeper than that. Sarawak members of the federal cabinet have played hugely pivotal roles in formulating national policies with lasting impacts on all Malaysians even today.
Take English in our education policy as one example. The author of our policy to have Bahasa Malaysia as the national medium of instruction was none other than the late Tun Abdul Rahman Ya’kub when he was the minister of education. He would, of course, go on to become Sarawak’s third chief minister.
Such was Rahman’s pride in his signature national policy that he was reportedly unmoved later when Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, then prime minister, was mulling a switch back to teaching Science and Mathematics in English and sought out Rahman for a public endorsement and political cover over a very contentious issue.
The oil and gas industry is another subject that seems to rile many in Sarawak today, based more on emotions than any rational basis. Petronas, our national oil corporation, and easily the most respected such corporation internationally today, was incorporated back in the early 1970’s with vital inputs from Tun Abdul Taib Mahmud, then the minister of primary industries.
Were it not for the foresight and innovative thinking of Taib and the Federal Government then, Malaysia might never have succeeded in breaking the stranglehold of the multinational oil majors through the expedient of production-sharing agreements.
The success of Petronas today owes much to early pioneers such as Taib and the late Tun Abdul Razak Hussein. Perhaps Taib’s uncle, Rahman, should not only have agreed as chief minister to a five per cent royalty take with then finance minister Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah but have the foresight to fight for a state stake in Petronas at its inception. A state stake now would, of course, be prohibitively costly given the corporation’s huge capitalisation. But, of course, hindsight, as the saying goes, is always 20/20 and Rahman could be forgiven for not taking a risk betting on Petronas’ eventual success.
There may be some legitimate grumbling in Sarawak and Sabah — until the past few years when Putrajaya made good on a slew of major infrastructure works — if the two most significant oil and gas producing states in the country got their fair shake of development allocations from the handsome takings from the taxes on Petronas’ profits (which incidentally are contributed significantly from the corporation’s international operations today) and the dividends Petronas consistently pays to its sole owner, the Federal Government.
Another pivotal Sarawak player in the national political and economic scene is Tan Sri Leo Moggie, now chairman of Tenaga Nasional Bhd, the national power utility whose corporatisation, as did others, he oversaw as the federal minister for energy, telecommunications and posts. Sarawakians are largely unaware of his vast contributions nationally in part because Sarawak zealously guards its autonomy over public utilities such as the Sarawak Electricity Supply Corporation (SESCo), now subsumed under publicly-traded Sarawak Energy Berhad.
Almost equally under the public radar has been the behind-the-scene role played by Moggie in recent years in securing for the Roman Catholic Church in Sarawak the licence to operate the St Joseph’s Private School in Kuching, the only such educational institution anywhere in Malaysia.
The writer is a Kuching based journalist