Datuk Seri Najib Razak would have lost his premiership and UMNO/Barisan Nasional kicked out of Putrajaya if the 368-page Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Illegal Immigrants in Sabah (RCIIIS) had been written and released before the 13th General Elections on May 5 last year.

If a Sabah state elections is held now, I have no doubt that UMNO/BN would be kicked out of state government and power by the single issue of the Report of the RCIIIS.

This is the measure of the disappointment, disbelief, disquiet and dismay which had greeted the release of the RCIIIS Report in Kota Kinabalu on Wednesday, both in Sabah and in Malaysia.

This may explain for the cloak-and-dagger arrangements for the launching of the Report of the RCIIIS, where the DAP MP for Kota Kinabalu Jimmy Wong, the DAP Sabah State Assemblyman for Kepayan Edwin Bosi, former Senator Maijol Mahap as well as NGO representatives were unceremoniously barred from the event, as if the authorities had something to hide instead of marking a historic event for the state and nation.

Obviously, what the Chief Secretary Tan Sri Ali Hamsa and the Attorney-General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail, who conducted the launching of the Report, were mortally afraid of was to be questioned by elected representatives about the report, but the ruckus over the barring of elected representatives of the people and NGO officials and individuals could have been averted if they had been allowed into the media event as guests and observers but without questioning rights.

In fact, the Prime Minister himself should have been in Kota Kinabalu to launch the report, unless he has reasons to believe that the report will be a public relations disaster, as it has proven to be in the past two days.

The orchestration of twitter bombs during the launch of the report to sabotage and jam interested but critical twitter sites, like mine, was another tell-tale sign that there were those in authority who had a guilty conscience and wanted to deflect full attention on the Report of the RCIIIS – expecting rightly that it was a going to be a disaster.

I do not think it is an exaggeration to describe the Report of the RCIIIS as the worst Royal Commission of Inquiry report in the nation’s history.

Clearly those in authority knew that the Report of the RCIIIS would be a disaster.

This was why elected representatives were barred instead of being welcomed with open arms.

This was why there was more than six-month delay in the publication of the RCIIIS Report although it was submitted to the Yang di Pertuan Agong on May 14.

This is also the reason why the RCIIIS Report was not tabled in Parliament for debate.

Is this also the reason for the sudden attempt to strip the RCI of its “royal” character and to downgrade it to a Commission of Enquiry without the “Royal” appendage?

Native Sabahans have been let down for over four decades or for two generations on the problem, which has changed the political demography in the state and created an unprecedented socio-economic crisis for the people in the “Land Below the Wind”.

In full trust, they had looked forward to the RCIIIS Report to provide a final solution to the problem but it has proved to be the “Letdown of all Letdowns”!