He said some of Sabah’s rights had been eroded over the past few decades and “it is our duty now to restore the rights due to Sabah”, according to a report in The Borneo Post.
Chong said this in agreeing with Sabah Minister of Special Tasks Teo Chee Kang’s statement that the focus should be on restoring and safeguarding the rights of Sabah instead of arguing over semantics pertaining to the status of Sabah and Sarawak in the federation.
Chong, who is also the chairman of LDP Petagas Division, said the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) was signed between Malaya, Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore during the formation of Malaysia.
He said a recent statement (by speaker of parliament Pandikar Amin Mulia) that the status of Sabah was the same as the other states in the peninsular was “only the view of an individual who has no historical facts to support his argument”.
The priority now, he was quoted as saying, was to take concrete steps to restore Sabah’s rights through negotiations instead of wasting time and resources in arguing whether Sabah was an autonomous state or one of the 13 states in Malaysia.
Chong said the LDP was looking beyond the historical documents in pursuing policies and measures that would benefit Sabah and its people.
For instance, The Borneo Post quoted him as saying, newly-appointed Senator Yong Wui Chung, who is the secretary-general of the party, had called on the government to include Sabahans in the Digital Free Trade Zone initiative so that Sabahans will not lose out.