KOTA KINABALU: The UK-based Borneo’s Plight in Malaysia Foundation (BoPIM), a human rights organisation on Sabah, Sarawak rights issues, has expressed dismay that the national oil corporation Petronas and an extremist fringe group in the corridors of power are engaged in a war of words over who owns the country’s oil and gas resources.
KOTA KINABALU: The UK-based Borneo’s Plight in Malaysia Foundation (BoPIM), a human rights organisation on Sabah, Sarawak rights issues, has expressed dismay that the national oil corporation Petronas and an extremist fringe group in the corridors of power are engaged in a war of words over who owns the country’s oil and gas resources.
“There are no two ways about it,” said BoPIM President Daniel John Jambun in a telephone call to FMT in Kota Kinabalu. “The oil and gas reserves in the country belong, by and large, to the people of Sabah and Sarawak and no one in the peninsula should imagine that it belongs exclusively to their community.”
He was commenting on Perkasa President, Ibrahim Ali, making a claim that Petronas belongs to the Malay community and demanding that its top man be sacked for asserting otherwise. Ibrahim’s claim and demand was in response to Petronas Chief Shamsul Azhar Abbas throwing caution to the wind and stating that the country’s oil and gas reserves belong to all citizens.
Daniel ventures the theory that the spat between Perkasa and Petronas was being stage-managed following demands by Sabah and Sarawak for their measly 5 per cent oil royalty to be upped to a respectable 20 per cent.
The BoPIM Chief stressed that no matter what the “Hidden Agenda” was, Sabah and Sarawak will not be deterred from getting a larger slice of the oil pie in the short run while pressing for the return of their hydrocarbon reserves in the medium run.
The High Court of Borneo can rule whether Petronas belongs to the Malay community
Tracing developments since the repeal of various emergency ordinances by the Najib Administration, Daniel pointed out that it’s a double certainty now that the Petroleum Development Act 1974 is unconstitutional and the so-called oil agreements, between the centre and the two Borneo nations, illegal, null and void.
Daniel suggested that Perkasa take up the matter to the High Court of Borneo if it thinks that Petronas belongs to the Malay community.
No one, he reiterated, is buying “their bluff and bluster”.