OP ED OPINION | FIRST THINGS FIRST By Francisco S. Tatad- Hopes for Sabah under Anwar?
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FIRST THINGS FIRST
THE news about Anwar Ibrahim finally becoming the 10th Malaysian prime minister after a long, heroic struggle, and Mahathir Mohamad being dealt a most devastating defeat after serving as Malaysia’s longest sitting prime minister, has gladdened many Filipinos who have long supported Anwar as a patriot, a devotee of our national hero Jose Rizal, and a dear personal friend to many of our political leaders, academics and intellectuals. Like President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., former president Joseph Ejercito Estrada and many others, I count myself as one such friend.
Memento Maxima Digital Marketing @Anwar’s victory raises great hopes for us. Among these is the hope that Malaysia and the Philippines can begin talking again how to resolve their territorial dispute over Sabah, which was incorporated into the Federation of Malaysia in 1963, over the Philippine legal claim that it is part of its own domain.
Sabah originally belonged to the Sultan of Brunei but was ceded to the Sultan of Sulu in 1704 as a reward for his help in suppressing a rebellion. In 1874, the Sultan of Sulu leased it to the British trading syndicate of Alfred Dent and Baron de Overbeck for an annual fee of 500 Malayan dollars. Dent and Overbeck later transferred it to the British North Borneo Company, which passed it on to the British Crown, making it a British protectorate and later a part of the British Crown Colony of North Borneo.
In 1957, Britain vacated Malaya, upon the birth of the independent state of the Malayan Federation. Six years later, this new state expanded into the Federation of Malaysia, by incorporating Sabah (or North Borneo) after the Sultan of Sulu ceded his sovereign rights to the territory to the Republic of the Philippines. The Philippines then instituted its formal claim to Sabah, first with the British and then with Malaysia.
That same year the Philippines and Britain held ministerial talks on the Philippine claim in London, but failed to reach any agreement. In 1968, to patch up the diplomatic rupture that had ensued between Manila and Kuala Lumpur because of the claim, President Marcos Sr. suggested that the two parties meet in Bangkok to try to find a solution to their dispute. I covered these talks as a newspaperman.
The Malaysian panel was headed by Home Affairs Minister Ghazali bin Shafie, assisted by R. Ramani, an international lawyer, and Patrick Keith, their spokesman. The Philippine panel was headed by the chief of the DFA North Borneo Section, Ambassador Gautier Bisnar, assisted by Eduardo Quintero, a career diplomat and the panel’s resource person, and several young officers who would all become ambassadors later. These included the writer Armando Manalo (father of the current foreign secretary, Enrique Manalo), Juan Saez, Nicasio Valderrama and Rodolfo Severino Jr., who would later become foreign secretary and Asean secretary-general.
The two panels had no common ground. The Philippines wanted to elevate the case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), or World Court, but Malaysia would not even recognize the existence of a Philippine claim. In my first article from Bangkok, I said the talks were bound to fail — it was not a question of if, but when. When the Malaysians challenged the Philippine side to document their claim, the latter had to send Eduardo Quintero back to his home in Tacloban, Leyte, to collect his papers. But he had to take a “slow boat” because of his deadly fear of flying, and that nearly took forever.
Back in Bangkok, Gautier Biznar insisted that the only way for the two parties to move forward was to bring their territorial dispute to the “WC.” As soon as Ghazali heard it, he said, “By all means, let’s bring it to the WC!” Then the meeting adjourned, and upon resumption Biznar reminded Ghazali of their agreement to bring the dispute to the World Court.
“With all due respect, we have no such agreement,” Ghazali said, “our only agreement is to bring it to the WC, which to the best of our knowledge means, Water Closet.”
Ambassador Leon Ma. Guerrero was summoned from London to give a funeral oration on the talks that had failed, and since then most of the succeeding administrations tried to mute any interest in the claim.
But on Feb. 11, 2013, some 235 militant followers of one of the claimants of the Sultan of Sulu’s throne from Simunul, Tawi Tawi, arrived by boat in Lahad Datu to assert the Philippines’ unresolved claim. In the ensuing standoff, 56 militants, six civilians and 10 members of the Malaysian security forces were killed; most of the Sultan’s men were either captured or escaped back to the Philippines.
In March of this year, a French arbitration court ordered the Malaysian government to pay some legal descendants of Sultan Jamalul Kiram 2nd $14.9 billion in legal arrears for the use of Sabah. This does not involve any sovereignty issues, but it puts the Sabah question at the very center of the world propaganda stage.
With Anwar presiding over Malaysia, and Secretary Manalo, the career diplomat-son of the late Ambassador Manalo running our Foreign Office, there is probably no better time than now to restart negotiations on our Sabah claim. Will PBBM give it an earnest try?
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