Historic day after Constitution of the State of Sarawak (Amendment) Bill 2020 was passed by our DUN

It is a historic day for all of us when the Con­sti­tu­tion of the State of Sarawak (Amend­ment) Bill, 2020, to de­fine ‘ res­i­dent in the state’ to qual­ify for elec­tion into the State Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly (DUN) was passed on 13 November. This moment is also extra special for me after having tabled and moved  the amendment Bill which was passed with only 9 mem­bers of the op­po­si­tion bench ob­ject­ing to it. The first part of the Bill had also pro­posed that the qual­i­fy­ing age to be elected as DUN mem­bers be low­ered from 21 to 18. 

The amend­ment to our constitution was to spec­ify only 2 cat­e­gories of per­sons would qual­ify as ‘res­i­dent in the state’: a cit­i­zen born in the State of Sarawak, whose par­ents or ei­ther of them was also born in the State and he is nor­mally res­i­dent in the State; or a cit­i­zen, though not born in the State, whose par­ents or ei­ther of them was born in the State and he is nor­mally res­i­dent in the State. Our learned op­po­si­tion mem­bers ob­jected specif­i­cally to the sec­ond part of the Bill, which seeks to amend the ex­pres­sion ‘ res­i­dent in the state’ in Ar­ti­cle 16 Clause 2(1)(c) of the Sarawak Con­sti­tu­tion.

Nevertheless, I had ex­pressed our ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the feed­backs given by the op­po­si­tion mem­bers dur­ing their de­bates on the Bill eventhough some of them who were against it may not have un­der­stood the Bill in depth be­cause the fresh Bill was only re­vealed to them in short notice. I had also mentioned to them from the first day the first (it­er­a­tion of this) Bill was tabled, their sole in­ten­tion was to run down the Bill re­gard­less.

It sad to see that they (opposition) had mis­led the DUN and those out­side after only look­ing at the first part of the Bill with­out try­ing to look deeper. I didn’t have the op­por­tu­nity to re­fute or wind up the first time, so the op­po­si­tion con­sid­ered it a tem­po­rary vic­tory. Doing it on purpose, I had let them en­joy their tem­po­rary vic­tory for a day even though in reality, the Bill was only de­ferred and not dis­missed.

On 10 November, our DUN Speaker Datuk Amar Mo­hamad As­fia Awang Nas­sar had de­ferred the Bill after it was ini­tially tabled and de­bated on Tues­day say­ing there were anom­alies that had to be clar­i­fied. The fresh Bill re­moved any am­bi­gu­ity and anom­alies as to the def­i­ni­tion of a ‘res­i­dent in the state’.

The in­tro­duc­tion of this Bill is timely and is a man­i­fes­ta­tion that the GPS state gov­ern­ment which al­ways has the in­ter­ests of Sarawakians first and foremost. We had al­ways safe­guarded and will con­tinue to safe­guard the state’s rights and in­ter­ests, and will not al­low non Sarawakians to in­ter­fere in our po­lit­i­cal af­fairs or to bring into our state po­lit­i­cal cul­tures which are detri­men­tal to the peace, unity, and pros­per­ity of our beloved state.

The amend­ment when passed will en­sure that only Sarawak-born cit­i­zens and Sarawak cit­i­zens born out­side the state to par­ents, of one of whom was born in the state, and nor­mally res­i­dent in the state are qual­i­fied for elec­tion into this au­gust House.

The op­po­si­tion should be ashamed of themseleves for al­leg­ing that the Gabun­gan Parti Sarawak (GPS) state gov­ern­ment had in­tended to open up the DUN to nonSarawakians when the ini­tial Bill was tabled the first time. They misunderstood the ex­pres­sion ‘ res­i­dent in the state’ was cur­rently not de­fined ei­ther in the eighth sched­ule of the Fed­eral Con­sti­tu­tion or in the Sarawak Con­sti­tu­tion.

But the term ‘ res­i­dence’ and ‘res­i­dent’ had been de­fined by our courts to mean any­one who is liv­ing in a par­tic­u­lar place ‘with some de­gree of cer­tainty apart from ac­ci­den­tal or tem­po­rary ab­sences’. The state gov­ern­ment is con­cerned that based on the ju­di­cial in­ter­pre­ta­tion any nonSarawakians from other states in the fed­er­a­tion who is re­sid­ing in the state by hav­ing work per­mits or serv­ing in the fed­eral pub­lic ser­vice, or the po­lice, or armed forces, would be qual­i­fied to stand in the state elec­tion.

It would en­able politi­cians from other states to come and stay tem­po­rar­ily in the state to claim that they are res­i­dents in the state. It has hap­pened in other states, we do not want it to hap­pen in Sarawak. Thus, the approved Bill would re­move all in­ter­pre­ta­tive am­bi­gu­i­ties or un­cer­tain­ties as to the real in­tent and ob­jec­tive of the pro­posed amend­ment to Ar­ti­cle 16 of the Sarawak Con­sti­tu­tion. There­fore Clause 2 (1)(c) of the Bill pro­vides a clear def­i­ni­tion on the term ‘res­i­dent in the state’.

Un­der the pro­posed amend­ment only two cat­e­gories of per­sons qual­ify as ‘res­i­dent in the state’, namely a cit­i­zen born in the state of Sarawak whose par­ents or ei­ther of them is also born in the state and he is nor­mally res­i­dent in the state. Or, a cit­i­zen not born in the state whose par­ents or ei­ther of them was born in the state and he is nor­mally res­i­dent in the state.

This amend­ment that had been passed by our DUN will en­sure that only Sarawak­born cit­i­zens and Sarawak cit­i­zens born out­side the state to par­ents, of one of whom was born in the state, and nor­mally res­i­dent in the state are qual­i­fied for elec­tion into this au­gust House”. Thus peo­ple with no Sarawak con­nec­tion ei­ther by birth or the birth of their par­ents, would not be con­sid­ered ‘nor­mally res­i­dent’ in Sarawak, and would be dis­qual­i­fied from be­com­ing DUN mem­bers.