Making the call to chief minister Hajiji Noor, Tangau said since the DUN was last adjourned on Dec 23, 2020, it has passed the six-month interval between one legislative session and another as of June 23 this year.
“The emergency currently halts the legislative clock and avoids automatic dissolution but the clock will resume after August 1.
“By convening the DUN after Aug 1, the state government risks exposing the state to another snap election since the last one in September 2020.
“If anyone successfully seeks a court declaration that the DUN has automatically dissolved on Aug 2, Sabahans may be exposed to a super-spreader event.
“Alternatively, Sabah will be put under another emergency which will hold back its return to normalcy,” he said in a statement today.
Tangau, who is Upko president, said the state assembly sitting can be reconvened for even as brief as a day where some important decisions, such as an amendment to the DUN’s Standing Orders to enable the state assembly and its committees to meet online or in hybrid mode.
Meanwhile, Tangau, who is Tuaran MP, also called upon Sabah parties and elected representatives working together with their peers in Sarawak and in peninsular states, to jointly demand a number of steps in decentralisation.
The move is intended for work on the necessary constitutional amendments to enable greater autonomy for the states to better respond to the pandemic and economic hardship, as well as for post-pandemic development.
Other than that, Tangau said the Ninth Schedule of the Federal Constitution should be amended by the next full parliamentary meeting to move medicine and health, which are Item 14 from the federal list to the Concurrent List, alongside public health, sanitation and the prevention of diseases.
This is so that state governments have a bigger say in the inter-related aspects to formulate more effective responses to future medical emergencies.
“By the next feasible state legislative assembly meeting, enact a public health ordinance for Sabah as per the existing provision of Item 7, which is public health, sanitation and the prevention of diseases, on the Concurrent List,” Tangau said.
He added that decentralisation will allow Sabah to create elected divisional governments, equivalent to the peninsular states, whose boundaries can be carefully redrawn to empower ethno-linguistic-cultural diversity in Sabah and enable more effective and bottom-up economic development.
“The state government can assign this ground-breaking reorganisation of Sabah to be a region on par with Malaya to our deputy chief minister Jeffery Kitingan, who was the first to advocate the restoration of divisions/residencies as a level of administration,” he said.