Longtime Sabahan politician Dtuk Jeffrey Kitingan suggested yesterday that in order to make Sabah and Sarawak “equal partners” in Malaysia, there needs to be three Deputy Prime Ministers – one each from the Peninsula, Sabah and Sarawak.
He said the structure of the current Federal Government needs to be reviewed and overhauled, as he claimed that the original Malaysia Agreement 1963 to form the Malaysian Federation amounted to an attempt to colonise Sabah and Sarawak.
“You have deputy prime ministers for each of the region. The prime minister will be elected by elected representatives,” the president of the Borneo Heritage Foundation said, as reported by The Malay Mail Online‘s Ida Lim.
He went on to say that the post of Prime Minister should be shared between all three regions on a rotational basis.
Under the system he is proposing, the three regions would contain their own states, with Peninsular Malaysia having 11 states, and Sabah and Sawarak having six and nine states respectively.
As things stand now, Malaysia is made up of 13 states, including Sabah and Sarawak, and three federal territories – Kuala Lumpur, Labuan and Putrajaya.
Kitingan, who is also Bingkor assemblyman and the president of the Sabah chapter of the State Reform Party (STAR), said, “If you were to save Malaysia, we have to restructure.”
He also suggested two other alternatives to overhaul the Malaysian government, all with the aim of lifting Sabah and Sarawak from what he calls “subservient” positions.
The first suggestion would see all three regions having their own limited autonomy under three Prime Ministers, but with all three regions contributing economically and acting under the auspices of a federal government, which would have control over national defence, national law enforcement, financial policies and international affairs.
The second suggestion would see Sabah and Sarawak seceding from Malaysia altogether, but Kitingan insisted that he would rather see a review of the current Malaysian government system instead.
