KUCHING: Padungan assemblyman Wong King Wei has urged Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Adenan Satem to come clean on whether he had failed to get the federal government to increase oil royalty for the state.
Wong, also state DAP publicity secretary, said the chief minister’s recent statement that he had to go slow on oil royalty negotiations due to declining world crude oil prices was bad news for Sarawakians.
“If he has failed (in the negotiations), just tell Sarawakians honestly before the state election so Sarawakians can weigh his performance on this matter,” he told a press conference here yesterday.
Last year, the State Legislative Assembly (DUN) unanimously passed a resolution to entrust Adenan to negotiate with the federal government to increase oil royalty from the current five per cent to 20 per cent.
Wong recalled that during the last DUN sitting, Assistant Minister of Industrial Development (Investment and Promotion) Datuk Julaihi Narawi, in answering a question raised by Sadong Jaya assemblyman Aidel Lariwoo, said that as at Jan 1 this year, the discovered oil resources from Sarawak was estimated at around 11 billion barrel oil equivalent, which is approximately 47 per cent of the overall discovered petroleum resources in Malaysia.
Julaihi, in responding to a supplementary question by Aidel, also said the state’s crude oil resources were expected to last for another 25 years.
Wong said based on what was disclosed by Julaihi and taking into account what Adenan had said, it was very bad news for Sarawakians, given that there was not much crude oil resources left in the state.
“We surrendered ownership of our petroleum resources to Petronas due to the Petroleum Act in 1974. It is now 2016 and the chief minister is still asking us to wait and put on hold the negotiations. How long more are we going to wait? We have only 25 years of resources left.”
On another matter, Wong said he was not optimistic that Adenan would accept the idea of enacting a Referendum Act or Ordinance in the state, even with the 300,000 signatures collected from Sarawakians supporting the plea.
“I do not think that he (Adenan) wants Sarawak to be more democratic. Looking at his actions before this, the first measure he did after taking office (as chief minister) was increasing the DUN seats from 71 to 82, and none of them was in urban areas—where the population density and increase in population over the years were the highest.
“We could see that the 11-seat increment destroyed the whole democracy system because it did not reflect the one man, one vote, one value principle.”
On the state’s pursuit of education autonomy, Wong claimed the federal government promised to give the state government autonomy in the sense that state education agencies would have the right to choose the contractors for school construction.
“To me, this is not autonomy. This is autonomy in terms of business. When we talk about education autonomy, it means the state will have the power to decide on syllabus and be given funds to engage local teachers, fund missionary schools, Chinese education and so on.”-Borneo Post
Post a Comment