-Dr. S. Ramakrishnan, December 11, 2014

The Royal Commission of Inquiry absolves the culprits who were responsible for the organized free inflow of about 69,000 illegal immigrants and later enrolling them in the electoral list. The RCI did not probe into the motives behind project IC or project Mahathir but shifted the blame on corrupted civil servants. Even the ordinary man in the street and the illegal immigrants themselves know the culprits involved in this fiasco but the RCI couldn’t pin point them.  No civil servants dare to openly allow illegal immigrants into the country if not for the powerful political figures behind them.  Mustapha of USNO lost the election to PBS but could not accept the results. The federal government under Mahathir Mohamad colluded with Mustapha to overthrow Pairin Kitigan of PBS. These Muslim illegal immigrants were allowed into Sabah and registered as voters. It is obvious as who is responsible for this treason against the county. But RCI did not have the moral courage and honesty to name the culprits. Najib Razak must have appointed the RCI to white wash their wrongs and absorb the wrongdoers.

On 11 August 2012, Najib Razak announced the formation of the Royal Commission of Inquiry for illegal immigrants in Sabah and its 8 Terms of references. The announcement was in response to the resignation of 3 members of parliament who said that they were resigning due to the inaction of federal government over this matter. The current prime minister had led a parliamentary select committee in 2007 on illegal immigrants to Sabah. Nothing came out of it.

Former Prime Minister Mahathir was directly involved and recently even justified project IC. To defend the issuance of identity cards to Muslim illegal immigrants from Philippines  and Indonesia, Mahathir Mohammad has said that “On the basis of the length of stay and mastering of the national language, they qualify to be citizens of this country, and so they acquired citizenship.” He further questioned that “why cannot the migrants of Sabah who have all these qualifications be accepted as citizens? The objections to them being accepted seem to be political,” he said. In his blog posting, Mahathir claimed that choosing not to naturalize migrants in Sabah was also racist, and that Malaysians should accept that their fellow citizens may come from different backgrounds.

This project IC was clearly done under the blessing of UMNO so that the political party of their choice will rule Sabah. UMNO wanted to neutralize and split Kadazanduzun and Chinese votes in Sabah so that they become politically weak, a game UMNO is good at.

Project IC involved certain political parties as well as various government agencies including the election Commission of Malaysia, the National Registration Department and the Immigration Department, which comes under the purview of the Ministry of Home Affairs. After 6 months of investigation, GE13 would be over and everything will be back to as before. Therefore the PM should disclose the findings of earlier PSC headed by him before initialing a new PCI with Terms of Reference that will investigate who are the culprits responsible for the fiasco.

The RCI had clearly cheated and let down the hope of Sabahans to clean up their electoral list. The RCI report is not worth the paper it is reported on. If it is worth its paper the report should be debated and deliberated in parliament.

In West Malaysia there are thousands of Malaysian born Indians and Chinese holding red ICs and after years of attempting to obtain citizenship still considered stateless. For the slightest of reasons they were issued red ICs. But hundreds of thousands of Indonesians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and Filipinos illegal immigrants are freely issued citizenships. Unfortunately these wicked designs will affect the rights and opportunities of Sabahans and all other Malaysians. The end cannot justify the means.