A piece of legislation can be altered by jejune Parliament with the Executive in tow whenever a particular piece of legislation hinders and hampers secret government agendas.
Hansard, the parliamentary record of debates and deliberations, offers every caring and concerned citizen a rare glimpse of what was discussed, what was the thinking behind the passing of a Bill.
The intent of the lawmakers becomes very revealing and relevant. Judges take pains to read the intent behind a piece of legislation that is uncomfortable and awkward to decision making.
The 1992 case Pepper v Hart, 3 WLR 1032, established that courts can refer to Hansard, or legislative debate reports, to interpret a statute when it is ambiguous or unclear. Hopefully, judicial activism will not overrule or vacate Pepper.
The Bill that became MA63 was fraught with doubts and misgivings on that fateful Friday in the House of Commons on 19 July 1963. Mark that date carefully as MA63 became a binding treaty on 31 August 1963.
Mr. Hon. R W Sorenson, MP for Leyton, noted that the Muslim population of Sabah and Sarawak was 38 percent and 23 percent, respectively. He made a curious case of something that needs to be read between the lines. It’s almost like he and his colleagues knew the Islamic agenda of Malaya despite Article 3 of the Federal Constitution concerning Islam being the official religion of Malaya.
He wondered aloud of “the possibility of wholesale conversions that take place to any religion, and in the case of Sarawak, say, among the Dayaks to Islam, is there not a real possibility that there might be the two-thirds, who could then impose upon the people of Sarawak the same unfortunate restrictions as are being imposed upon the people of Malaya.”
Curiously, the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, Mr. Nigel Fisher, got up to say that his colleague Mr. Sorenson could have a point although he himself “has never been there”! But he quickly added that mass conversions of Dayaks and others to Islam may not be likely as there was a “relatively small number of Muslims in the two countries.”
That was indeed refreshing to note that he referred to Sabah and Sarawak as “two countries”. Wish they had stuck to their guns instead of giving in to the unconscionable and unconstitutional word “States” when referring to these two countries.
Religion seemed to be a bee in the bonnet for the MPs assembled. Mr. Brockway rose to say that his colleagues must be aware that “there is already happening in Malaya, in areas of which the propaganda of Christian teaching is now prohibited, and whether the Hon. Mr. Fisher would make representations about this before the Malaysia scheme goes through?”
Weren’t these MPs aware that Article 3 of the Federal Constitution allowed the practice of other religions despite Islam being the religion of Malaya? One wonders whether any of the MPs present were trained in the law or political science.
The Under-Secretary Hon. Fisher thereafter made a condescending remark that “. . . of the way Malaya has been, I shall not say generous because I think that has an unfortunate connotation, but forthcoming, in her attitude to the other territories,” in reference to Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak.
The Hon. Mr. Brockway thereafter voiced his opinion that “I believe that it is a mistake to rush this Bill through the House . . . because favorable relations have yet to be established between Indonesia and the Philippines.”
At this point, Mr. Brockway was ill at ease that the United Nations fact-finding mission to ascertain the wishes of the people of Sabah and Sarawak had yet to be confirmed. He wished Tengku Abdul Rahman, the prime minister, would consider delaying the date.
Like a movie with a sudden twist of fate and circumstances owing to good editing, Mr. Brockway begged the House to consider “the establishment of a wider confederation…” that would include Indonesia and the Philippines with Malaya, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak!!!
Then rose Sir John Marlow, MP for Middleton and Prestwich, who lamented the speed at which the Malaysia Bill was being hurried in the House. He also told the chamber that his family enjoyed business connections in Malaya in the 1850s.
Sir John then went on to superciliously say that he harboured “little doubt that undue propaganda was organised by the Colonial Office to achieve the support of these very uneducated and unpolitical people in all too short a time.”
If the people of Sabah and Sarawak were “very uneducated and unpolitical”, why wasn’t more time, like a year perhaps, suggested and allocated? The hurry was to have Malaysia declared a political reality on Merdeka Day – 31 August 1963 – come hell or high water.
Surely a “very uneducated and unpolitical people” needed coaching, training, teaching and unlearning past mistakes in the haunted political jungle. These people, and their descendants, whose lives were about to be affected, needed all the time and space to understand and know what federation and amalgamation meant as former British colonies.
Meanwhile the MPs present expressed concerns about the May 1963 Barisan Socialis rally in Singapore that denounced Malaysia as neo-colonialism. Further the rally organisers and supporters hit home the point that the “Malaysia Plan is a British plot to prolong colonial domination in South-East Asia”.
That call by the Barisan Socialis made sense because the United Nations had issued a Resolution 1514 (XV) of December 1960 “reaffirming the importance of the universal realisation of the right of peoples to self-determination, national sovereignty and territorial integrity and of the speedy granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples as imperatives for the full enjoyment of all human rights.”
The MPs present on that fateful Friday did acknowledge that the United Nations factfinders were politically necessary to ascertain the wishes of the people of Sabah and Sarawak, not just the wishes of the decision-making politicians of Malaya, Singapore and the United Kingdom. Of course, appeasing Indonesia and the Philippines loomed large, too.
Therefore, Resolution 1514(XV) was simply indispensable under public international law. But that never materialised because of the British hurry to push through the Malaysia Bill as acknowledged and affirmed by the MPs there present. They had a plan, and their deliberations were obviously evident given the fact that Hansard could not be altered or amended to suit special interests.
Essentially, a tug-of-war of conflicting views and opinions were in full array. There was the usual bogeyman Communist scare, British neo-colonialism, and the Malayan Pan-Islamic Party committed to securing territorial unity in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaya and Borneo under Islamic domination.
But that was the British viewpoint which gave them the impetus to choose the least of the three evils mentioned earlier. The UN Resolution 1514 lay dormant and impotent and simply referred to at crucial intervals during their discussions.
Mr. Graham Page, MP for Crosby, rose to invoke Clause 5 of the Malaysia Bill concerning judicial arrangements. The colonial hand is all over the page as the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was slated to be the ultimate appellate court.
British interests in Malayan commerce had to be monitored and managed by British jurisprudence in case those interests were jeopardised by Malayan and Malaysian counter-interests. Malayan leaders simply failed to take this into account.
The British may have left our shores, but our local jurisprudence is still shored and staged by an imported jurisprudence which never stops clashing with Malaysian culture, customs and traditions. The Civil Law Act 1956 is simply an excuse and an explanation.
Whatever happened to the rules of personal law as enunciated by colonial jurists, the Malayan, and the Iban adat system? Native Courts have been around for hundreds of years to adjudicate disputes, and yet the people of Sabah and Sarawak were deemed “uneducated and unpolitical”.
Mr. Graham Page did make recommendations for a Malayan judge to sit in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. He mentioned that a judge from Ceylon, and one from New Zealand were invited to sit in this Judicial Committee.
Part III will cover the rest of the deliberation in the House of Commons on that fateful Friday.
The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
