Is there a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) or its equivalent in the world which had spent 20 months to hold public hearings, calling 211 witnesses whose evidence covered more than 5,000 pages, public memoranda, “177 exhibits including charts, pictures, statistics, letters, official directives, commentaries and articles” which must have exceeded over 1,000 pages, but producing a 368-page report so replete with conflicts, contradictions, non-findings, omissions (including over 6,000 missing pages) that another high-level committee has to be set up to read it and try to understand it, as well as wondering what to do with it?
If there is such a RCI or its equivalent in another country, I will like to know about it.
Malaysia is probably the only country in the world with the dubious honour of having such a RCI – the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Illegal Immigrants in Sabah (RCIIIS).
It is a marvel that the Cabinet sat on the RCIIIS Report for some six months and did not know what to do about it – as UMNO/Barisan Nasional just want the status quo to continue undisturbed.
The Report was presented to the Yang di Pertuan Agong on May 14 and finally the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Abdullah acceded to public pressures from political parties both in Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat as well as Sabah-based for its public release on Dec. 3 – but after Dewan Rakyat has adjourned to avoid a parliamentary debate and scrutiny.
The only Cabinet decision taken was to set up a Working Committee chaired by Tan Sri Joseph Pairin Kitingan to “peruse and study” the recommendations of the RCIIIS Report and then submit its findings to the Permanent Committee on the RCIIIS Report.
When Najib had first announced the publication of the RCIIIS Report and the appointment of a Working Committee on the RCIIIS Report with Joseph Pairin as it chairman, I had immediately suggested that the Cabinet appoint Joseph Pairin to be Chairman of the RCIIIS Implementation Committee to demonstrate that Barisan Nasional has the political will to resolve the 40-year nightmare of illegal immigrants in Sabah – and the RCIIIS Report had approved the language used by a former Chief Minister witness who described Sabah as having reached “ICU stage” as a result of the illegal immigrants problem.
But I was wrong, as clearly there was nothing much to implement in the RCIIIS Report, as it avoided giving any concrete or conclusive finding or recommendation on the basic issues about the problem, whether about the existence of the ‘Project IC’, the number of illegal immigrants on Sabah’s electoral roll or the number of illegal immigrants in Sabah.
In fact, the RCIIIS Report was so vague, inconclusive and self-contradictory, it allowed the Home Minister to deny the existence of “Project IC” and the Chief Secretary to claim that the RCIIIS had found that there was no political motivation to “Project IC”, which were never the findings of the RCIIIS.
Can the Chairman and the other four members of the RCIIIS list out the findings and recommendations to be implemented to address the 40-year nightmare of illegal immigrants in Sabah? No, because there were no such findings or recommendations in the RCIIIS Report.
So now we have a Joseph Pairin Working Committee on the RCIIIS Report to “peruse and study” the findings of the RCIIIS, which is going to be as big a job as that entrusted with the RCIIIS as the Report is unbelievably inconclusive and vague about all the basic issues of the illegal immigrant nightmare.
After that, the Joseph Pairin Working Committee is to submit its recommendations to the RCIIIS Report Permanent Committee, chaired by the Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and the Sabah Chief Minister, Datuk Seri Musa Aman, which will study the recommendations and proposals submitted by the working committee and bring them to the cabinet for its decision.
When will Joseph Pairin Working Committee complete its “perusal and study” of the RCIIIS Report, and when will the Joseph Pairin Report on the RCIIIS Report be submitted to the Permanent Committee, and when will the Permanent Committee submit its report to the Cabinet, and when will the Cabinet decide on how to implement the “findings” of the Working Committee of the RCIIIS Report?
What happens if the Joseph Pairin Working Committee on the RCIIIS cannot reach a consensus for a Report to be submitted to the Permanent Committee? Whole process jammed to a halt?
The merry-go-round seems to be an endless frolic, by which time, the illegal immigrants in Sabah would have exceeded the native Sabahans as the population in the state!
What we are seeing is the latest episode in a long catalogue of outrageous examples of the utter lack of political will to resolve once-and-for-all the four-decade nightmare of illegal immigrants in Sabah, and the putting up of an empty façade of action which takes the problem nowhere and finally ends up in another long circuitous merry-go-round with neither end nor solution.
In fact, nobody knows whether the Working Committee of the RCIIIS Report has been formed, although it is more than a month after its announcement by Najib and 18 days after the publication of the RCIIIS Report.
Joseph Pairin seems to have gone into hiding when he should be telling Sabahans how he propose to ensure that following the publication of the RCIIIS Report, concrete action would be taken to resolve the 40-year illegal immigrants problem once and for all, as recalling all blue identity cards in Sabah and to conduct a state-wide re-registration exercise to issue all ICs to flush out all illegal and fake Ics!
The Home Minister, Datuk Seri Abdul Zahid Hamidi made a very intriguing statement when he visited Sabah last week to announce the terms of reference for the Permanent and Working Committees of RCIIIS Report.
He said that both committees had their first informal meeting at the Chief Minister’s official residence last Tuesday.
What is the meaning of this “first informal meeting”? Does it mean that both Committees had not been constituted yet – which appears to be the case as the full list of the members of the two committees have not been published. If so, there could be no first meeting of both Committees, whether formal or informal.
Even more intriguing is Zahid’s response when asked whether Pairin had accepted the appointment as Chairman of the Working Committee. The Home Minister said Pairin had verbally agreed to the appointment but he had to check whether the appointment had been accepted by Pairin officially.
Again, this is ridiculous, as how can Zahid say that the Working Committee had its first “informal” meeting when he does not know whether Joseph Pairin had officially accepted appointment as Chairman of the Working Committee?
Are we having phantom committees of the RCIIIS Report holding phantom meetings, whether formal or informal? This will be Phantoms Galore in Sabah, adding to the hundreds of thousands of phantom voters in Sabah as a result of the illegal immigrants on Sabah’s electoral rolls.
All this rigmarole of the endless merry-go-round about the Grand Pretence to resolve the 40-year nightmare of illegal immigrants in Sabah must stop.
For a start, Joseph Pairin should break his silence and state his position on the following ten points:
1. Whether he has accepted and has started work as Chairman of the Working Committee.
2. The list of full members of the Working Committee.
3. When is the first meeting of the Working Committee and the regularity of its meetings.
4. What is the deadline for the Working Committee to complete and submits its report to the Permanent Committee.
5. Whether he and the Working Committee members have full access to the 6,000 missing pages in the RCIIIIS Report.
6. Whether the Working Committee can ensure that the missing 6,000 pages of the RCIIIS Report are published for public study.
7. What are the priority business of the Working Committee.
8. Whether he would ask the Sabah Chief Minister to convene an emergency meeting of the Sabah State Assembly within the next 30 days to debate the RCIIIS Report.
9. Whether the Working Committee can ensure that the authorities would recall all ICs in Sabah and carry out a state-wide re-registration exercise of ICs to flush out all illegal and fake documentation.
10. Whether the Working Committee can ensure that there will be two-day full debate on the RCIIIS Report when Parliament reconvenes on March 9.
