MILF to drop Sabah claim? SULU SULTANATE ASKS PH GOVT NOT TO ABANDON SABAH CLAIM

by Neil A. Alcobe, Reporter

The Manila Times

March 21, 2015 12:05 am

THE Sultanate of Sulu will not support passage of the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), which aims to create a new autonomous region in Mindanao, because it believes that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) would drop the sultanate’s Sabah claim in exchange for Malaysia’s support for the creation of a Bangsamoro government.

Abraham Idjirani, spokesman for the Sultanate of Sulu, told The Manila Times on Friday that the sultanate views with “cautious pessimism” the Bangsamoro law because of the “ambiguous objective” of the proposed measure.

Idjirani said once the Bangsamoro government is in place, the MILF will initiate dropping of the Sabah claim.

“The MILF would find legal means how to formally drop the Sabah claim because ancestrally [Sabah is not its property]. [Sabah] is the property of the people of Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Zamboanga Peninsula, and Palawan. [The MILF] will drop [the] Sabah [claim] because [its leaders] are not interested in it, and they owe Malaysia a debt of gratitude,” he explained.

“It’s not the Congress of the Philippines that would drop the Sabah claim but the assembly of the MILF… in favor of Malaysia,” the sultanate’s spokesman said.

Malaysia acts as international mediator between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the MILF for the creation of a Bangsamoro government to replace the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Idjirani said they and other stakeholders were not consulted despitedesire of the sultanate to be involved in attaining complete peace in Mindanao in southern Philippines.

“If both parties wanted to attain lasting peace in Mindanao, they should also include other [concerned parties] like the Christians and the indigenous people,” he added.

Last year, Esmail Kiram 2nd renewed his family’s call on the government to pursue the claim to Sabah, now part of Malaysia.

The Sultanate of Sulu urged the Aquino administration to support its claim to North Borneo (Sabah) as the government’s historic and moral obligations.

In 2013, then-Sultan Jamalul Kiram 3rd sent some 200 of his armed followers to Lahad Datu, Sabah, to assert their claim over the island, resulting in the deaths of more than 50 people and imprisonment of several others by Malaysian authorities.

The Sultanate of Sulu has been claiming that, based on historical facts, Sabah belongs to it and it was only leased to Malaysia’s British North Borneo Company in 1878.

(Image credit: Map of Sabah downloaded from www.raleighinternational.org)