Thank you to our local media friends for their support in highlighting my winding up speech

My heartfelt thanks to all of our media friends who had given their fullest support in highlighting the winding up speech I made at the Sarawak State Assembly (DUN) yesterday. I did ex­pressed my ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the feed­backs from op­po­si­tion mem­bers dur­ing their de­bates on the State of Sarawak Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2020 in which some who were against it may not have fully un­der­stood it be­cause the new Bill was only re­vealed to them yes­ter­day.

I had no intention to dwell on this for too long but personally what I wanted to say to is that they (op­po­si­tion mem­bers) had attempted to run down the Bill from the first day it was tabled on 10 November.

They had allegedly mis­led our DUN and those out­side after only look­ing at the first part of the Bill with­out try­ing to look deeper into the matter. I did not even have the op­por­tu­nity to re­fute or wind up the first time, and so the op­po­si­tion con­sid­ered it a tem­po­rary vic­tory for them. I have let them en­joy their tem­po­rary vic­tory for a day because essentially the Bill was only de­ferred and not dis­missed.

The amend­ment was necessary to spec­ify only two 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. The Bill had also pro­posed for the qual­i­fy­ing age to be elected as local DUN mem­bers be low­ered from 21 to 18 years of age.

Thus, the fresh Bill was tabled so as to re­move any am­bi­gu­ity and anom­alies as to the def­i­ni­tion of a ‘res­i­dent in the state’. Similarly, the in­tro­duc­tion of this Bill is a man­i­fes­ta­tion on our Gabungan Parti Sarawak ( GPS) State Gov­ern­ment had al­ways safeguarded the in­ter­ests of Sarawakians first 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 of Sarawak.

The amend­ment which was passed will certainly 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 our au­gust House.

Our state gov­ern­ment is utmostly con­cerned that based on the ju­di­cial in­ter­pre­ta­tion any non-Sarawakians 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 also 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.

During yesterday's DUN session, I have em­pha­sised that the 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.

The amend­ment which was passed 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 elec­tions held here. 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.