MALAYSIA: Long-standing migrants issue in Malaysian Borneo poses a threat to the government as the country's most closely fought election in history is expected to be called any time soon

Record ID: 348558

  • Title: MALAYSIA: Long-standing migrants issue in Malaysian Borneo poses a threat to the government as the country's most closely fought election in history is expected to be called any time soon
  • Date: 8th October 2012
  • Summary: FAWZIAH ABDUL SITTING AT HOME FAWZIAH'S MALAYSIAN IDENTITY CARD (SOUNDBITE) (Bahasa Malaysia) FORMER FILIPINO, FAWZIAH ABDUL SAYING: "All thanks to the government. If not were the government we wouldn't have a document." FAWZIAH'S MALAYSIAN IDENTITY CARD; STATED: ISLAM, MALAYSIAN AND FEMALE IN BAHASA MALAYSIA (SOUNDBITE) (Bahasa Malaysia) FORMER FILIPINO, FAWZIAH ABD
  • Embargoed: 23rd October 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Malaysia
  • Country: Malaysia
  • Topics: International Relations,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA85GCZ4DNW5K4N10OHVGHWEI0J
  • Story Text: Housewife Fawziah Abdul wants to thank former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohammad for making her a citizen 10 years after she illegally slipped into Borneo from the southern Philippines in search of a better life.
    The 50-year-old lives on the outskirts of Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Malaysia's Sabah state, where her tin-roofed shack jostles for space with more than 1,000 others in a slum where children play among heaps of rubbish.
    She is hopeful that her three children will get a new home and identity cards if she votes again for the government.
    Abdul says she is part of Project Mahathir, referring to a secret plan said to have been approved by Mahathir that helped fuel a five-fold surge in Sabah's population since the 1970s and turned it into a vote bank for the ruling coalition.
    "All thanks to the government. If not for the government we wouldn't have a document," said Abdul, who showed her identity card that lists her as a Sabah-born citizen.
    She says the attraction of Sabah was an improved quality of life. "Because Sabah a good place, so I came here to look for a job, which is totally different from the life in the Philippines. That's why I came to here from the Philippines."
    But life in Sabah for people like Fawziah Abdul is becoming more complicated.
    She is one of the hundreds of thousands of migrants who fled their home countries to Sabah over the past three decades in search of security and a better income but who now find their growing presence is a focus of anger among the local population.
    As a national election looms within seven months, the 13-party Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition is banking on Sabah and neighbouring Sarawak state on Borneo island to prolong its 55-year grip on power.
    Without these two states, it would have lost power in 2008 when a resurgent opposition won a majority of votes on peninsula Malaysia. But its grip on the Borneo states, which account for a quarter of parliament seats, is showing signs of slipping.
    The large presence of Muslim immigrants has fuelled complaints of government discrimination against Christians who have also been a bedrock of ruling coalition support.
    Residents also complain about competition from Filipino and Indonesian migrants for jobs in the oil and gas-rich region, whose revenues are mostly channelled to the federal government and where one in five people lives on less than 1 U.S. dollar a day.
    Christians, mostly members of indigenous groups such as the Kadazandusun in Sabah and the Dayaks and Ibans in Sarawak, once made up nearly half of Sabah's population but now form less than a third of its 3.2 million people.
    Yong Teck Lee, president of the Sabah Progressive Party which quit the BN four years ago because of dissatisfaction with the way it ran the state, says the migrants are seen as a possible vote bank for the government.
    "The relevant departments and relevant UMNO (United Malays National Organisation) operatives within the government had been looking at illegal migrants as a potential vote bank by giving them rights to vote," said Yong.
    The Christian vote can still give a potentially vital boost to the opposition, which won a majority of votes in mainland Malaysia in 2008 but only got three of 56 seats in Sabah and Sarawak.
    "That makes the issue more than just an illegal immigrants' situation. It is more than a law and order issue. This is an issue that makes a lot of people in Sabah terribly upset," added Yong.
    The election is expected to be the closest in the former British colony's history after the BN lost its two-thirds majority for the first time in 2008.
    This is partly due to Christian, Buddhist and Hindu minorities in the mostly Muslim country abandoning the BN, complaining of discrimination over issues such as the airing of Islamic programmes on state television.
    In Borneo, Bibles have been seized at ports and clerics have accused churches of converting Muslims.
    The opposition - a coalition of Borneo parties and a mainland alliance that campaigns for greater transparency - won 15 seats from the BN in Sarawak state elections for its best showing in 24 years. It got votes from indigenous Christians as well as from the ethnic Chinese minority.
    In an apparent sign of concern over his coalition's chances in Sabah, Prime Minister Najib Razak bowed to pressure in June and formed a royal commission of inquiry into the granting of identity cards to illegal immigrants.
    The department of Malaysian Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein is responsible for the inquiry. When asked recently (September 28) about its progress he said: "I'll be announcing whatever needs to be announced, and we shall be ready to announce in the RCI (Royal Commission of Inquiry)."
    Critics say the inquiry may be only a whitewash by the government to gain favour with voters ahead of the elections.
    "The RCI actually is a toothless tiger, doesn't have the authority to suggest to the government what action to be done because in the process of the investigation they will uncover wrong-doings, uncover the culprit, said Wilfred Bumburing, a lawmaker in Sabah who quit the BN over the government's handling of illegal immigrants.
    Government sources say the panel has yet to meet due to opposition from the dominant party in the BN, the United Malays National Organisation, that controls Sabah, and from the still-influential Mahathir.
    While repeatedly denying links to Project Mahathir to media, Mahathir has said in his blog that the Filipinos and Indonesians were qualified to become citizens as they stayed in Malaysia for more than a decade and spoke the Malay language.
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