Malaysiakini.com (http://www.malaysiakini.com)
For better or for worse, Happy Birthday Malaysia, 16 September 2009
by Erna Mahyuni(a Malaysiakini team member)
Every 16th of September, Sabahans remember Malaysia. It is a day of rest, reminiscing and regrets.
We rest because it is a public holiday. We reminisce on that fateful day in 1963 when Sabah agreed to form Malaysia with Malaya and Sarawak.
Where does the regret come in? It's the bitter knowledge that on the other side of the South China Sea, the day passes without acknowledgement.
Dates are funny things. We celebrate birthdays and anniversaries with reverence and as the 16th of September is Malaysia's 'real' birthday, you would think some celebration would be in order.
How do you celebrate what you don't recall? While every year Sabahans are reminded of the choice and sacrifices we made to be a part of this country, many West Malaysians are woefully ignorant of 16th September's significance.
Forgotten history
Originally, the signing of the agreement should have been on the 31st of August, 1963.
The signing was delayed by the objections from Indonesia and the Philippines, both having laid claim to North Borneo.
It was left to the Sabah and Sarawakian people to decide via a referendum. For better or ill, they chose Malaysia.
Malaysia's formation also saw a war being fought as Indonesia attempted to claim a stake in North Borneo.
Much is made of the freedom fighters who brokered our autonomy from British rule.
What about those who fought to keep the country together in those early days? Do we so easily forget the time of the Confrontation with Indonesia that threatened a newly created nation?
Things could have turned out very differently. Borneo could have rejected Malaya's overtures.
Indonesia could have won the war. We may forget history but we cannot change it.
Sabahans and Sarawakians made that fateful decision to say 'Yes' to Malaysia and all that Malaysians have today.
Sabahans now live with the sadder consequences of the choice - they now live in the poorest state in Malaysia.
This is despite being blessed with an abundance of natural resources, the revenue of which is channelled to the federal coffers.
Aliens among us
Among West Malaysians, there is an apathetic ignorance about how the other side lives.
It isn't helped by Sabah's immigration policies that require non-Sabah residents to apply for entry and work permits in the state.
What separates West and East Malaysia is more than geography, not just the careless forgetting of history.
For Sabahans coming to West Malaysia, they are little prepared for the vast differences in culture, mindset and yes, politics.
I remember telling a West Malaysian I was from Sabah. His reply was one I heard not once but many times.
"Oh, so how long have you been in Malaysia?"
In West Malaysia, it seems, Malaysians are only Malay, Chinese or Indian. It is a disconcerting and sad feeling to be treated like an alien in your own country.
The Selangor temple debacle would not have happened in Sabah. Non-Muslims do not face the ridiculous bureaucratic hurdles in building places of worship that they do in the Peninsula.
Multi-racial political parties are not a novelty back home the way they are here.
The racial tolerance and acceptance I grew up with is missing in West Malaysia; it seems to only exist in Yasmin Ahmad films.
Perhaps it's because Sabah has the largest Christian population in the country.
Maybe it stems from the easy acceptance of interracial or interreligious marriages in Sabah.
Interracial marriages happen more in Sabah than in any other state but then there are just so many races here that mingling with them is inevitable.
Filmmaker and writer Amir Muhammad once remarked that in East Malaysia, you could glimpse real tolerance.
Knowing what that is makes it even harder for East Malaysians to reconcile its opposite being so prevalent on the other side of the South China Sea.
One Sabahan explained West Malaysia's failure at racial (and national) integration thus: "You can't get Ah Seng, Raju and Ali to play happily together if they are forever told that they are Ah Seng, Raju and Ali, and nothing else."
Marginalised, still
46 years have passed and what has being in Malaysia meant for us? Sabah has the most natural resources in the country behind Sarawak.
Explain then, why we are now the poorest state in the country.
Clarify why the rural poor still struggle to gain access to education, electricity and piped water.
It's a sad state of affairs. As a Sabahan in Kuala Lumpur, I can't help but feel bitter looking at the development around me while Kota Kinabalu is barely much larger than Seremban town.
Whose fault is it? Do we blame the politicians or do we blame the Sabahans too apathetic to demand more from their leaders and from the nation they helped bankroll?
Apportioning blame, however, still doesn't solve the problem of poverty in the state.
In 2008, the UNDP studied poverty levels in Sabah and found 23 percent of households living below the national poverty line.
Child poverty rates stood at 42 percent and one fifth of the population aged six and over have never been to school.
If Sabahans had known that this would be the price they would have to pay for forming Malaysia, there would likely be no Malaysia Day.
One, not two Malaysias
How do you solve the problem of national integration?
There's the geographic hurdle of a sea between us. The bigger problem, I think, is ignorance.
West Malaysians don't need to go over to Sabah and Sarawak to learn their significance to Malaysia.
Malaysia Day should be a day to remember where we, as Malaysians, came from and how we got here.
It is the lack of appreciation of our past that makes it hard for us to connect, we people divided by the South China Sea. Perhaps it is only by acknowledging that past and celebrating it will we finally find the common ground to make us one Malaysia, not two.
Sabah is used to being forgotten. Is it too much to ask, for just one day, for other Malaysians to remember?
Remember that you fought for us and that we chose you. We chose Malaysia.
(End)
