By Kim Quek
Malaysiakini
Dec 5, 2014

COMMENT The royal commission of inquiry (RCI) report exonerating the Barisan Nasional (BN) government of responsibility in the gargantuan illegal immigrant calamity in Sabah must have stunned, shocked and disgusted many who had been eagerly looking forward to this RCI report for some relief and justice.

The RCI, instead, attributes the entire blame on errant civil servants who have carried out such illegal activities for profit.

Who on earth could have believed such blatant whitewash when an influx of Muslim illegal immigrants from southern Philippines and Indonesia over a sustained period of decades has caused Sabah’s population to explode to five times its 1970 numbers (3 times the growth rate of other states)?

Also the fact that monumental evidences have been produced both before and during the hearing of the RCI of the massive conversion of these illegals into voters (popularly known as phantom voters) to rob the original Sabahans of their sovereignty?

Have our defence forces, police, immigration department, national registration department (NRD) and the entire cabinet under the BN government been in deep slumber all these decades while millions of foreigners swarmed over Sabah until they outnumbered the original inhabitants who were impoverished in the process?

Could a few corrupt civil servants motivated by greed have engineered and achieved such a fantastic feat that has drastically and illegally altered the demographic and power balance of such a huge state without a powerful command from the top hierarchy of the government?

Evidence galore of political conspiracy

If there was no political or governmental involvement, how does the RCI explain Operasi Durian Buruk, in which former Sabah NRD chief Ramli Kamaruddin (1993-1995) led an emergency squad in late 1993 to mass convert illegal immigrants into voters with collusion from the Election Commission so that they could be planted into selected marginal constituencies where they could tip the balance in favour of BN in the early 1994 election?

As a result of the intensive and accelerated infusion of phantom voters that had been going on since 1990 (of which Ops Durian Buruk is just one instance), no doubt prompted by the crushing electoral defeat of the Muslim-led BN by Christian party PBS in 1990, the electoral landscape of Sabah had been transformed whereby Muslim majority constituencies have dramatically increased from 30% to 50% of the state’s total constituencies of 48 – just in time for the 1994 election.

As a result, PBS could only manage a marginal victory in 1994, instead of an anticipated sweeping victory as it did in 1990.

Another example of Project IC or Project M (M stands for Mahathir) revealed in the RCI hearing is operation G17 (17 stands for 17 members in the squad).

Another former Sabah NRD chief Abdul Rauf Sani (1990-1992) led the team to issue 40,000 to 100,000 blue ICs (for citizens only) and 200,000 birth certificates to immigrants (birth certificate qualifies the holder to apply for blue IC).

Mahathir the ultimate authority?

It is not for nothing that this clandestine project is named after former premier Mahathir Mohamad, for vital evidences have led to his door steps.

G17 leader Rauf Sani testified that his team flew in from Sabah to Kuala Lumpur where they stayed closeted in the house of Mahathir’s close aide and political secretary Aziz Shamsuddin to churn out the thousands of blue ICs for immigrants.

Ops Durian Buruk leader Ramli Kamarudin described in details the scenario of his meeting with Mahathir’s confidante, deputy home minister Megat Junid Megat Ayub, who instructed Ramli to carry out the project in the presence of a number of witnesses who were identified by Ramli in the heaaring.

That circumstantial evidences point irresistibly to Mahathir being the final authority is bolstered by the fact that leaders of this operation, including Rauf Sani and Ramli Kamarudin, were transferred specifically to spearhead Project M from the National Security Council which is directly under the Prime Minister himself.

Further, Ramli Kamarudin also confirmed that he was “ordered” to go to Sabah to help create a Muslim dominated state.

However, despite such overwhelming evidence, Mahathir emerged from the RCI hearing unscratched, where he even told the Commission he never heard of Project M until very recently.

But how can we realistically expect the RCI to dig out any truth from the god father of Umno Baru, or for that matter, finding anything that could hurt the BN regime, when the entire make up of this RCI, from commissioners to investigators to conductors of the inquiry consists of only existing or former officials of the BN establishment, specifically picked by BN for this task?

Staggering illegal immigrant numbers

And just how bad is the illegal immigrant plague in Sabah?

RCI report quoted a 2007 PBS memorandum which worked out the total number of such immigrants to be 1.7 million.

This number is consisting of 600,000 new bumiputra citizens holding blue ICs issued by NRD, 750,000 with fake ICs or no documents, and a further 400,000 holding immigration document IMM13.

RCI also stated that these figures tallied with those presented by the Malaysian Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) in a round table discussion in August 2006.

Suhakam commissioner Professor Hamdan Adnan (left) had then said such a mass presence of illegal immigrants, unless promptly resolved, “could raise the spectre of an eventual reverse takeover.” This, according RCI, means that illegals holding Malaysian ICs could one day become leaders of the state.

Yet, despite such mammoth immigrant problems devastating Sabahans’ political, social and economic life, all we have from this long awaited RCI report is the simple verdict that “Project IC probably exists’ – after 9 months of hearing on 211 witnesses, and a mysterious delay of one year before the completed report is released to the public.

The merry-go-round solution

What about recommendation or remedies?

Yes, RCI gives a 199-word recommendation in the 366 page report, and that is: form a permanent committee, which will be assisted by a working committee, which will look into the immigrant problem and make recommendations to the permanent committee.

Not unexpectedly, BN has enthusiastically embraced this recommendation while applauding the RCI report as finally revealing the truth that BN is innocent of the entire Sabah immigrant scam.

As for Sabahans and Malaysians, be prepared to see this merry-go-round of committees and investigations, which have been going on for decades without solving any problem, to continue as long as BN remains in power.

For, cleaning up the illegal immigrant mess would also mean purging the phantom voters, which would in turn threaten Umno’s grip of power not only in Sabah but also in Putrajaya.

KIM QUEK is the author of banned book “The March to Putrajaya” where the Sabah immigrant issue is discussed in Article No 57.