SIBU: Senator Robert Lau Hui Yew has suggested that the PETRONAS Twin Towers be renamed ‘PETROS Twin Towers’ as he vehemently clarified on the current conflict perpetuated by a former prime minister regarding PETROS and PETRONAS
Lau said he read with a mix of bemusement and anger regarding Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s recent statement that any deal concerning oil and gas resources found on Sarawak’s land must go through Parliament and not be decided through backroom negotiations.
“It is interesting that he has now chosen to take a principled stand on this issue – one that he did not seem to apply consistently in the past.
“My question is this: did this principle apply when the then-Chief Minister of Sarawak, (Tun Datuk Patinggi) Yakub Abdul Rahman, was pressured into signing a one-page letter in June 1976, effectively surrendering Sarawak’s oil and gas rights to PETRONAS?
“The federal government tasked (Tan Sri) Tengku Razaleigh, the then-Finance Minister, with securing the signatures from Sarawak and Sabah, offering a mere five per cent royalty in return.
“This letter was never tabled in Parliament, nor was it presented to the Sarawak State Assembly or even approved by the Sarawak Cabinet.
“Does Dr Mahathir now agree that this letter lacks legitimacy since it was never endorsed by Parliament, the Sarawak Government, or its legislative assembly?” he queried in a statement on Saturday.
Lau explained the injustice by giving the following analogy: imagine an adult deceiving and pressuring a child into signing away his inheritance with empty promises of care and welfare.
Years later, when the child comes of age and realised the manipulation, is he not entitled to reclaim what was taken from him? Or must he first seek the adult’s consent to do so?
He said Dr Mahathir also questioned, “When Sarawak was under British rule, did they build the Twin Towers? They were very poor. The British took all their money.”
Urging Dr Mahathir to support such claims with factual data, Lau pointed out that it was affirmatively well-documented that the British colonial government extracted vast wealth from Malaya, which was the economic backbone of the British Empire, through its tin and rubber exports.
According to Lau, it is estimated that hundreds of billions of pounds were repatriated from Malaya over more than a century, and British companies owned much of the industry, and profits were sent back to the UK – until Dr Mahathir led the ‘Dawn Raid’ in 1981 to regain ownership of key British-held assets on the London Stock Exchange, shortly after becoming Malaysia’s fourth Prime Minister.
While pointing out that it was indeed true for Malaya, Lau said it was not true for Sarawak.
“Sarawak only became a British colony in 1946, when Charles Vyner Brooke, the third White Rajah, ceded it to Britain,” he stressed.
He explained further that Sarawak remained a colony for less than 17 years, until 16 September 1963, when the British handed it over to the newly formed Federation of Malaysia.
“In that short time, Britain had neither the opportunity nor the capacity to extract significant wealth from Sarawak. Its oil and gas resources were not yet meaningfully developed.
“The hundreds of billions taken – and still being taken – out of Sarawak have not benefited the British. They have overwhelmingly benefited Malaya.
“A large portion of this expropriation happened during Dr Mahathir’s tenure as Prime Minister from 1981 to 2003, when he wielded control over PETRONAS.
“So, I ask again: did Dr Mahathir seek the consent of the Malaysian Parliament for this extraction? The answer is clearly no.
“PETRONAS’ accounts are not open to public scrutiny, and its operations lack transparency. By 2014, the cumulative value of petroleum extracted from Sarawak by PETRONAS and the federal government had reached RM1 trillion,” he elaborated.
According to Lau, when Malaysia was formed, Sarawak and Sabah were promised accelerated development but instead, their resources were siphoned off for the development of others, often at their own expense.
Saying that although it was true that Sarawak was under the British rule, it did not suffer in the way Dr Mahathir alleged, citing that Sarawak has suffered, and continues to suffer until today, what Malaya suffered under colonial rule.
“Can we not see that the same pattern of exploitation continues; only now it is not the British, but our own federal system that perpetuates it?
“Did the British build a ‘Twin Tower’ in London with the profits from Malaya’s rubber and tin?
“No. But Malaysia (at the instruction of Dr Mahathir) did it – with oil and gas profits from Sarawak and Sabah.
“The PETRONAS Twin Towers stand tall in Kuala Lumpur, built with wealth drawn largely from these two states.
“Therefore, I suggest renaming the PETRONAS Twin Towers to ‘PETROS Twin Towers’ – as a symbolic acknowledgment of the true source of that wealth and the promises made to Sarawak and Sabah that remain unfulfilled,” Lau concluded.
