MERELY INVESTIGATIVE IN NATURE AND NOT CORRECTIVE: SIPAUN

Merely investigative in nature and not corrective: Sipaun 

Kota Kinabalu August 14, 2012: The recently announced Terms of Reference (TOR) of the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) on the illegal immigrants in Sabah is "investigative" and not "corrective" in nature, said former State Secretary Tan Sri Simon Sipaun.

"Basically there is no political will É everything, only investigate, but there is no mention of action once the culprits have been identified.

"What are you going to do to those getting the IC through the back door?

Do you deport them or what?" he asked.

Presenting his talk at the "Ubah dan Tukar" (Change and Switch) Forum organised by DAP at Star City Convention Centre here, Sunday, Sipaun also questioned the time the Government took to come up with the TOR.

"From what I understand from newspaper reports a decision on the RCI was made by the Federal Cabinet on Feb. 8, 2012. It took six months for the Government just to make the announcement.

"This could be done in two hours," he said.

"Surely this does not indicate seriousness and urgency," he said, adding that to his knowledge a Cabinet decision should be based on a very comprehensive Cabinet paper.

"The draft would have been referred to the relevant ministries, departments and agencies for views and comments, including the Attorney General's Chambers for legal implications and Ministry of Finance for financial implication respectively," he said.

"Once a decision is made the next thing to be done is to implement it.

Terms of Reference do not arise following the decision to establish the RCI. Logically, the terms of reference should have been finalised before decision is made on the RCI," he said.

Sipaun who is spearheading Desah, a NGO set up to coerce the political parties in Sabah to go for one-on-one fights in the coming election, said he was initially reluctant to come to the talk because he was not a politician.

However, he agreed when DAP Sabah Secretary Dr Edwin Bosi told him that the people also wanted to hear views from the non-political side.

Earlier, DAP Sabah Chief, Jimmy Wong said the people should not be misled by the announcement of the RCI and things that the BN government claimed it can do.

"Teo Beng Hock's case, which was not complicated, was given one year but the RCI on illegal immigrants in Sabah, which is a very wide and complicated issue is only given six months to be completed," he said.

"What can we do? The TOR shows that the RCI has no right to take action, it cannot even bring people to the court," he said.

Tuaran MP Datuk Wilfred Bumburing who was speaking in his first public forum organised by DAP claimed that Upko had also mulled similar action that was taken by him in Tuaran where he denounced involvement in Barisan Nasional (BN) and formed the Angkatan Perubahan Sabah (APS) or Sabah Reform Alliance.

"I told (Upko President) Tan Sri Bernard Dompok that despite the announcement of the RCI the TOR was not forthcoming so we should make a decision.

"He (Dompok) said 'not yet we wait first'," he said, adding, however, he could not take it anymore after his memorandum including evidence of illegal immigrants being given ICs in Sabah which took him six months to compile in 2010 was not given serious attention.

"I told Dompok I'm leaving but again he asked me to 'wait don't be hasty' É but my conviction is that they (BN) are not serious about Sabah," he said, adding that the statement by former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed was also an open admission by him on his involvement in the issuance of ICs to foreigners in Sabah.

Bumburing also expressed no confidence on the RCI since it could only suggest to government but will have no power to take punitive action.

Later, Seputeh MP, Theresa Kok briefed the audience on the many programmes implemented by the Pakatan Rakyat Selangor government.

She also explained that unlike Sabah, Selangor has no oil and timber so the Pakatan State Government had to find ways to boost its revenue and that is through sand mining.

She said the Selangor state government then took over all the sand mining activities in the state and the profit channeled to its various programmes including the free water scheme.

On another note, Kok claimed the problem of illegal immigrants being given ICs in Sabah was now also happening in Selangor.

"Don't just think that is only Sabah's problemÉit is national," she said, adding that among the steps being taken by the Selangor government was to spend money and personally inspect one-by-one the addresses of new voters in the electoral rolls for the state.

She said it was a tedious task but it had to be done to ensure the newly registered voters are genuine.

Also present were DAP Sabah deputy chairman, Fred Fung and publicity secretary, Chan Foong Hin.

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