“Zainnal and people like him are alienating others when the struggle for Sabah rights should involve everyone. When I became the Federal Minister for Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government, I appointed the first Sabahan to be Secretary-General of the Ministry.”
Rahman, who is also Kota Belud MP, advised Zainnal who compiled “The Queen’s Obligation” recently, not to make the struggle for Sabah rights a personal one, a one-man show, when all the Sabah Ministers in the Federal Cabinet are speaking up on the subject. “Anifah Aman, Maximus Jonity Ongkili, Wilfred Madius Tangau, and I have spoken up in the Federal Cabinet on Sabah rights. The Federal Cabinet, after we spoke up, pulled back several papers that would have been detrimental to Sabah’s interest.”
“Don’t think that we are just keeping quiet. Anifah heads the Committee which is looking into Sabah’s 40 per cent revenue entitlement as stated in the Federal Constitution. They have experts to look at the figures and consolidate them. We don’t know whether the 40 per cent revenue is net and limited to income tax or otherwise.”
The 40 per cent is just one line in the Federal Constitution, pointed out Rahman. “We have to study it and see what it means. We need to balance it against Federal allocations for Sabah. At the end of the day, we have to see whether we are in deficit. My Ministry alone spends close to a billion on Sabah.”
The Federal Minister said that it was not the done thing for Zainnal to go around claiming that the 40 per cent was not in the National Budget and that the MPs from Sabah don’t represent the state but their political masters in Putrajaya.
Rahman alleged that Zainnal had been trying to pit Anifah and him against each other. “Zainnal claims that I have no respect for Anifah who engaged eight lawyers and accountants to look at Sabah’s rights according to the Federal Constitution and the Malaysia Agreement 1963.”
“The struggle for Sabah is being fought in every direction and at every level. So, it cannot be his one-man show as Zainnal was trying to project.”