Armed conflicts in Mindanao: events triggered by unresolved Sabah issue and influenced by Malaysia

All the events involving armed conflicts in Southern Mindanao from 1968, 1969 and specifically in the early 70s until today were triggered by the one standing unresolved issue between the Republic of the Philippines and Peninsular Malaysia: Sovereignty rights over Sabah or the Manila Accord. These 'events' have been "influenced" by Malaysia. 

- Malaysia commenced "influencing events" in Southern Mindanao immediately after the discovery of a plan by the Republic to take control of Sabah in 1968

- Malaysia's Tunku Abdul Razak (father of current Malaysia Prime Minister Najib) was the first PM to pour money into Muslim secessionist rebels who at the time were led by Nur Misuari (first chair of MNLF) and seconded by Hashim Salamat (founder of MILF)

- Malaysia's PM Mahathir as soon as he took over continued the exercise and improved Tunku Abdul Razak's modus operandi by modernising the Malaysian armed forces. He then poured resources after resources into and "enlarged" Muslim secessionist training camps in Sabah. Mahathir devoted a great deal of effort in the Islamisation of Sabah by allowing the influx of Muslims from all over the region and granting them Malaysia citizenship in exchange for their votes so that Barisan Nasional (his party) would remain in power. He was responsible for the nationalisation of the oil resources of Sabah and created PETRONAS that would control the industry.

- When FVR's Govt, finally concluded a peace deal with the MNLF in 1996 with the backing of the OIC, Malaysia realised that their attempts to sow trouble in Southern Mindanao through the MNLF of which they were patrons might be endangered. The MILF shunned the 1996 Peace Agreement. Mahathir trained his efforts on the break-away faction headed by Hashim Salamat aka MILF and funded and supported the rebel group.

- In 1998, President Estrada who had just been elected to the presidency, and who was despised by Mahathir, decided to launch an offensive against the MILF after intel revealed that the MILF, fully armed with weapons from Malaysia (including missile systems that Mahathir had ordered earlier on) was gearing up for a full scale offensive against government military bases in the South. The AFP won.

- In 1999, the Sipadan hostage crisis took place. Sipadan is a Malaysian resort island. The hostage crisis began the long descent to hell of Estrada.

- In 2004, Gloria Macapagal accepted MILF's demand that Malaysia be the head of the monitoring team to supervise a Framework Agreement. Malaysian troops began to arrive in Southern Mindanao.

- Shortly thereafter, Senator Nene Pimentel questioned the wisdom of calling on Malaysia to oversee the proposed "peace talks" with the MILF invoking the fact that PH has a standing unresolved issue over Sabah

- In 2012, President Aquino handed over to Najib the signed "Talking points" for the envisioned shared sovereignty over a new political entity between GPH and MILF

- In 2013, Sultanate of Sulu launched siege in Tanduo, Sabah in a bid to re-take Sabah; many Tausugs died; in September, MNLF decided to rally against the planned signing of the Malaysia-inspired wealth sharing agreement between GPH and MILF which is scheduled on 16 September, on the 50th anniversary of the illegal annexation of Sabah to the created Malaysia Federation.

The bottom line is that Malaysia has always put one over GPH in their bid to ensure that PH will never be able to turn around to re-claim Sabah.

The Catholic priest who almost made it possible for Sabah to secede from Malaysia Federation

Historiana: The Catholic priest* in Sabah who was at the forefront of an independent Sabah 

In 1990, Benjamin Basintal (in picture), a Catholic priest led a 'revolution' from within Sabah. 

Basintal was linked to a Sabah secession plot in 1990. He went missing during that year detained under Kuala Lumpur's dreaded Internal Security Act (ISA) and possibly tortured. He had been hounded and harassed continuously by Kuala Lumpur agents. The loss of Barisan Nasional in the 1990 election and the victory of Christian-dominated PBS, the Sabah political party much hated by Mahathir, was attributed to his disappearance.

Benjamin Basintal was not your typical Catholic missionary priest. He was vocal about denouncing the inequities in Sabah, the corruption of its politicians and the greed and injustice of Kuala Lumpur.

According to his relatives, Benjamin saw Sabah "with its abundant natural resources on one side and many of its people abjectly poor on the other side was a gapping wound. The state’s wealth that could help lift them out of the poverty trap was instead paying for vanity projects elsewhere in Malaysia and this was an affront to him."

Basintal left for the United States soon after his release by Kuala Lumpur's ISA. How he got to leave Sabah remains a mystery. He studied journalism and went into teaching when he returned to Sabah.

Benjamin Basintal died of organ failure last month, a few weeks away from the Sabah elections.

*NB: What most Filipinos don't know is that Sabah used to be predominantly Christian until Mahathir imported Muslim would-be voters from Indonesia and the Philippines, a project he hatched from the time he came to power in 1981 and executed for a number of years until he retired from politics in 2003. Mahathir exported Bumiputra Malayans from Peninsular Malaysia with wads of cash (I kid thee not) and promises of a good life for them if they stayed and lived in Sabah, and of course, they had to vote Barisan Nasional or BN (Mahathir's party and Najib's party today.) Sabah had to be "de-Christianised" so to speak.

Mahathir was still flooding Sabah with Bumiputras from Peninsular Malaysia while I was living in Kuala Lumpur in the 90s. I also remember too well the stories surrounding the trial of the owner and publisher of the Borneo Mail which first bannered the disappearance of Basintal. Borneo Mail's owner was charged and tried under the Printing Presses and Publications Act a charge which still carries today, a penalty of three years jail or a fine of 20,000 Malaysian ringgits or both.

~~ By Anne de Bretagne
for the Defenders of the Philippine Sabah & Spratly Claims 
30 April 2013

To read about Benjamin Basintal:  The Incident that changed Sabah 

Link to Benjamin Basintal blog www.mrbensblog-antidot.blogspot.com

The Aquino family's extraordinary tradition of disdain for the Republic's claim to Sabah

When Mrs Cory Aquino became president of the Philippines following the fall of President Marcos in 1986, she tried hard to convince the royal Kirams of the Sultanate of Sulu, acknowledged heirs to North Borneo (Sabah) to drop their proprietary claims to Sabah. 

We think that was a tack she chose to be able to convince Congress to drop PH sovereignty rights claim to Sabah. However, popular as she might be then, Mrs Aquino encountered strong resistance from the public and from the members of Congress. With that for a backdrop in 1987, the PH government was unable to officially drop the country's long standing Sabah claim despite Mrs Aquino's efforts.

The disdain for the nation's Sabah claim, it seems, has been a remarkable and consistent tradition in the Aquino clan. 

In 1963, Senator Lorenzo Sumulong, uncle of Mrs Cory Aquino, himself rose against the Republic's move to put forward its Sabah claim by openly siding with the British and publicly praising the vision of Malaya's then prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman. Sumulong ridiculed the efforts of then President Diosdado Macapagal and Senator Jovito Salonga, the country's Sabah claim champion.

In 1968, Mrs Aquino's husband, Senator Benigno Aquino Jr, exposed Operation Merdeka by sensationalising it as the 'Jabiddah Massacre'. Operation Merdeka, in fact, was the first physical attempt by the Republic to take Sabah back. Following Mr Aquino's denunciation of the covert operation, Kuala Lumpur began to finance and support the separatist movement by the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) that saw the secession wars in Mindanao for many decades.

There have been revelations recently too that Senator Ninoy Aquino had actually sought Malaysia PM Mahathir before his return to PH from exile to the effect that in exchange for Malaysia support for toppling President Marcos,  Mr Aquino (the father) would be president and once he became president, he vowed to the Malaysian leader that PH would officially drop the Sabah claim. 

In February 2013, Mrs Aquino's own son, Noynoy, himself elected to the Philippine presidency, has been doing all he can for the Philippine Sabah claim to be dropped even it it means 'cavorting' with Kuala Lumpur and sacrificing the Tausugs of Sulu who are being wiped out in Sabah by foreign military troops.

In keeping with family tradition of disdain for the Philippine Sabah claim, and even as Filipino Tausugs are being slaughtered by Malaysia troops under orders of Najib Razak, President NoyNoy Aquino asks, "But what do you want me to do?

~~ By Defenders of the Philippine Sabah and Spratly Claims
04 April 2013
  

Malaysia's Mahathir was the father of "citizenship-for-votes" in Sabah to keep his enemies "even closer"

"CITIZENSHIP-FOR-VOTES" FOR DISPLACED FILIPINOS IN SABAH WAS MALAYSIA PRIME MINISTER MAHATHIR'S BRAINCHILD POTENTIALLY TO ENSURE THAT THE PHILIPPINE SABAH CLAIM WILL BE 'BURIED' FOREVER

By Admin ADB
For the Defenders of the Philippine Sabah & Spratly Claims
30 January 2013

MALAYSIANS ARE ASKING:"Why quiet about Dr Mahathir’s confession?"

The "confession" is all about the "role" of the former prime minister of Malaysia in the citizenship-for-votes scandal in Sabah that has rocked Malaysia. The report is actually misleading because if I am to believe some of the rather influential people I met in KL, the leader who engineered the scheme was Mr Mahathir himself. It was his "baby" so to speak. He was the brain behind it!

I first talked about this citizenship-for-votes -- although without exactly using those words, to the same group of Admins here a couple of years ago when we were first setting up a Sabah forum with some people (who, fortunately, we discovered early enough to be as degrading con artists as PM Mahathir was.)

The 'citizenship-for-votes' was a scheme that Dr Mahathir hatched and put in place in Sabah to ensure UMNO election in the province that would give the coalition control of Malaysia Parliament. I discovered this in the 90s in KL through people I knew there who were in politics and in business (most of them were in both -- the two sectors were inseparable) who were 'in the know' -- it was a kind of an open secret. But no one, absolutely no one in Malaysia politics - or big business for that matter, would dare speak of it publicly out of fear of the all-powerful Mahathir whose men in the Treasury held the purse strings for the party, for government contracts and for almost anything.

Sabah was the gold mine of votes for UMNO for PM Mahathir then. Without Sabah's votes -- hence the distribution of Malaysia ID cards, the coalition headed by BN would have collapsed in the Malaysia Parliament. UMNO was on tenuous ground following the resignation of Hussein Onn in 1981, PM Mahathir's predecessor. Mahathir knew that if a solution was not found, UMNO coalition would explode -- and if UMNO exploded, Barisan Nasional, his party had no chance of controlling Parliament.

The scheme was simple: UMNO rounded up most displaced Filipinos who had fled the Mindanao Secession War in the 70s and who had more or less integrated in the Sabah way of life and offered them citizenship. In exchange, they would vote UMNO in the elections. It worked. Mahathir won 5 consecutive general elections giving him the majority in Malaysia Parliament. I have every reason to believe that the 'citizenship-for-votes' in Sabah existed up to the early 90s (especially after his deputy and rising political star Anwar Ibrahim began to give him a run for his money and began to contest his leadership.)

In the 90s when I began visiting Sabah, I met several Sabahanos who fled to Sabah following the Mindanao Secession War. A few of those with whom I became friends admitted that they were benificiaries of the Mahathir citizenship-for-votes scheme. They had no choice -- they felt vulnerable and so accepted PM Mahathir's/UMNO's largesse in order to be able to stay in Sabah "legally."

Malaysia press hasn't got the 'bite' that Philippine media enjoys and they will find it very difficult to expose the extent of the citizenship-for-votes scheme that Mahathir had organised. According to one Basilan-born Sabahan leader I know and with whom I have remained in contact, he reckons, not counting Indonesians, that there were tens of thousands of Filipinos who had taken advantage of the citizenship-for-votes scheme of Mahathir. He told me that during the general election, it was amusing to see that the queus of voters in the polling stations were mostly people from Mindanao.

Sabah and Sarawak represent the most number of seats in the Malaysia parliament with Sabah delivering every election the most votes for UMNO -- not sure anymore how many (if I remember rightly they were in the 40s) but enough to maintain UMNO majority at election time; this is why Sabah is so important to BN (Barisan National or National Front) leaders who make up the majority in the UMNO coalition which then dominates the Malaysia Parliament.

Sabah votes were Mahathir's Malaysia Parliament lifeline without which his UMNO coalition had a poor chance of obtaining control of Parliament. In fact, even today, PM Najib, who lost in his own hometown in a recent election, without Sabah's gold mine of votes, there is every chance that UMNO, let alone BN, will not win the number of seats necessary to give him the majority of seats in Malaysia Parliament.

Incidentally, in the late 70s, a group of ethinc Chinese businessmen in Sabah tried to organise a "secession" movement and declare an independent Sabah. The repression was ruthless. Some Sabahanos who were originally displaced Filipinos were part of the movement (I know a couple of them very well) but when offered amnesty, they accepted and supported UMNO instead.

Now as to Free Malaysia Today's question: Why quiet about Dr M’s confession?

The answer is simple: PM Najib is still a recipient of the Sabah votes by those who took advantage of Mahathir's citizenship-for-votes scheme. Many of the members of BN today as well as some of the Chinese-Malaysian stalwarts of UMNO sitting in Parliament are also beneficiaries.

Why quiet? Because there is also a risk that if they insist on examining the scheme, Malaysia authorities might open cans and cans of worms that will expose not only the number of people who had been granted Malaysia citizenship for votes but also the long held secret that Mahathir even encouraged the emigration of Filipinos and Indonesians to Sabah with a view to populating Sabah with Malays predominantly to prevent the Chinese (and Indian) population from gaining ground in Sabah politically. 

But I have a deep seated suspicion that there is more to just preventing the Chinese (and Indian) population from controlling Sabah one day -- Mahathir's scheme, I am confident, had something to do too with ensuring that the Philippine Sabah claim would be buried forever.

Originally posted on : Philippine Sabah Claim Forum

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REPORT: Why quiet about Dr M’s confession?

By Joseph BingkasanJanuary 29, 2013Free Malaysia Today
Tuarasn MP Wilfred Bumburing is wondering why the Sabah Umno deputy chief is silent on the former premier's admission regarding the IC issue. 

KOTA KINABALU: Pro-opposition Angkatan Perubahan Sabah (APS) has taken state Umno deputy chief Salleh Said Keruak to task for being quick to criticise the opposition but not former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad who admitted his role in the citizenship-for votes scandal that has since rocked the state. 

APS president Wilfred Bumburing said Mahathir openly confessed following shocking revelations during the ongoing Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) hearing but Salleh has chosen to ignore this and not challenged the former premier to testify and instead focused on Anwar Ibrahim. 

Full story:http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2013/01/29/why-quiet-sbout-dr-ms-confession/