This should be a day of celebration.

But genuine patriotism does not require us to pretend that every question surrounding the formation and subsequent operation of Malaysia has been satisfactorily answered.

Over the past three days, BoPiMaFo has examined the difference between the Malaysia that was promised and the Malaysia that was implemented.

We asked what actually happened to North Borneo in 1963.

We examined a Federal Court finding that at least one safeguard contained in the Inter-Governmental Committee arrangements was never implemented.

We examined security, development, constitutional finance, demographic change, indigenous political participation and the need for a new constitutional strategy.

Today we ask the larger question:

HAS THE TIME COME TO INTERNATIONALISE THE UNFINISHED CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTIONS ARISING FROM THE FORMATION AND PERFORMANCE OF MALAYSIA?

BoPiMaFo believes the answer is yes.

But internationalisation must be based on documents, law and evidence — not slogans.

MA63 IS ALREADY AN INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENT

The Malaysia Agreement 1963 is not merely a Malaysian political document.

It is an international agreement concluded in London on 9 July 1963 involving the United Kingdom, the Federation of Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak and Singapore. It was registered with the UN on the 21st September 1970, bearing the number 10760.

It entered into force on 16 September 1963 and was subsequently registered with the United Nations.

Article VIII itself required the Governments concerned to take legislative, executive or other action necessary to implement specified assurances, undertakings and recommendations in the IGC Report where they were not already expressly incorporated into the Constitution.

That alone makes the continuing performance of the founding arrangements a legitimate subject of serious historical and international legal study.

Internationalising MA63 does not mean marching into the United Nations tomorrow and demanding that Malaysia be dissolved.

Nor does registration of MA63 with the United Nations automatically give Sabah standing before the International Court of Justice.

Those propositions would be legally simplistic.

Internationalisation means something more serious:

placing the complete history, legal framework and subsequent performance of the Malaysia settlement before international scholars, jurists, parliamentarians, indigenous-rights institutions and appropriate United Nations mechanisms.

DECOLONISATION MUST ALSO BE EXAMINED

North Borneo did not enter 1963 as an internationally sovereign State comparable with independent Malaya.

It was a British Crown Colony undergoing decolonisation.

That makes the United Nations decolonisation framework relevant.

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV), adopted on 14 December 1960, declared the principle of self-determination in the process of ending colonial rule.

Resolution 1541 (XV) elaborated the possible forms by which a non-self-governing territory could attain a full measure of self-government. The United Nations today summarises those principal outcomes as independence, free association with an independent State, or integration with an independent State.

These resolutions do not, by themselves, prove that the formation of Malaysia was unlawful.

Nor should Sabahans pretend that Resolution 1541 is an automatic sixty-three-year-late exit clause.

But they do raise legitimate historical questions.

How freely was North Borneo’s future political status determined?

What choices were genuinely available?

How was public opinion ascertained?

Was integration founded upon equality?

What role did the safeguards subsequently embodied in MA63, the IGC arrangements and the Constitution play in obtaining acceptance of Malaysia?

And what is the significance if important safeguards were subsequently not implemented, diluted or transformed?

Those questions deserve international academic and legal examination.

THE COLONIAL CAPACITY QUESTION HAS NEVER DISAPPEARED

There is another issue which deserves much deeper consideration.

When MA63 was signed on 9 July 1963, North Borneo and Sarawak were still British colonial territories.

Yet their representatives signed the Agreement, and the United Nations Treaty Series records North Borneo and Sarawak among the participants.

Britain subsequently informed the United Nations that, following the creation of Malaysia, it was no longer responsible for the international relations of North Borneo and Sarawak.

This does not automatically invalidate MA63.

But it raises a serious international-law question:

IN WHAT PRECISE LEGAL CAPACITY DID NORTH BORNEO AND SARAWAK PARTICIPATE IN AN INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENT WHILE BRITAIN STILL HELD RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS?

Who authorised the representatives?

What precisely was the legal nature of their participation?

How did that process interact with the peoples’ right of self-determination?

These questions should not be feared.

If the constitutional foundations of Malaysia are sound, historical scrutiny should strengthen rather than weaken them.

SABAH’S INDIGENOUS PEOPLES CANNOT BE LEFT OUT

Internationalisation must also address the rights of Sabah’s indigenous peoples.

The Federal Constitution itself recognises the natives of Sabah, including through Article 161A and the wider constitutional protections associated with their special position.

But international indigenous-rights law adds another dimension.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognises important principles concerning self-determination, participation in decision-making, indigenous institutions, traditional lands, territories and resources. Articles 25 and 26, for example, address indigenous relationships with traditionally owned or occupied lands, waters and resources.

The United Nations also emphasises full and effective indigenous participation in decisions affecting their lives, traditional lands, territories and cultural integrity.

These principles have profound relevance to Sabah.

Native customary land.

Forests.

Minerals.

Plantations.

Resource concessions.

Culture.

Political representation.

And demographic change.

This brings us directly to one of Sabah’s most disturbing unresolved questions.

DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE CAN BECOME A QUESTION OF INDIGENOUS RIGHTS

Sabah has experienced decades of extraordinary irregular immigration and controversy surrounding identity documentation and what became known as Project IC.

If foreigners were unlawfully documented as citizens and subsequently entered the electoral roll, the consequences would extend beyond ordinary immigration enforcement.

Every unlawfully registered voter would alter the relative weight of lawful votes.

And if this occurred on a sufficiently large scale, it could dilute the political influence of Sabah’s indigenous peoples in their ancestral homeland.

Let us be precise.

Article 161A does not guarantee permanent political dominance to Sabah natives.

Nor does international law entitle indigenous peoples to suppress the democratic rights of other lawful citizens.

Every lawful Malaysian citizen has an equal right to vote.

But lawful demographic change is fundamentally different from electoral change produced through unlawful citizenship or fraudulent documentation.

The principle is simple:

EVERY LAWFUL CITIZEN’S VOTE MUST COUNT.

But equally:

NO UNLAWFUL VOTE SHOULD CANCEL THE LAWFUL VOTE OF A SABAHAN.

If demographic or electoral manipulation occurred, its impact upon indigenous political participation deserves both constitutional and international scrutiny.

INTERNATIONALISE THE DEVELOPMENT QUESTION TOO

Sabah’s international story is not merely about political status.

It is also about development.

A territory blessed with petroleum, gas, timber, land, fisheries and enormous natural wealth today records Malaysia’s highest incidence of absolute poverty.

That contradiction deserves examination against the economic expectations accompanying Malaysia’s formation.

Sabah also possesses special constitutional financial arrangements, including the machinery surrounding the 40 per cent entitlement.

The question therefore is not simply how much development expenditure Putrajaya has announced.

The deeper questions are:

How much federal revenue has been derived from Sabah?

What was Sabah constitutionally entitled to?

What was actually returned?

And what development might have occurred had every financial entitlement been faithfully implemented?

This is not an argument that every Sabahan economic problem was created by Kuala Lumpur.

Sabah governments must answer for their own corruption, waste and failures.

But local failure does not erase federal constitutional responsibility.

FROM FEDERATION TOWARDS A NEW COMPACT

Internationalising Sabah’s constitutional questions does not mean that Malaysia must be destroyed.

There is another possibility.

Malaysia can be restructured.

MA63 did not establish a legal confederation.

The Federal Constitution establishes a federation.

We should state that honestly.

But nothing prevents Sabah, Sarawak and Malaysia from negotiating a fundamentally more decentralised arrangement for the future.

Call it asymmetric federalism.

Call it confederal federalism.

Call it a new constitutional compact.

The terminology matters less than the substance.

Sabah and Sarawak should exercise considerably greater authority over matters inherently local to them.

Federal authority should concentrate upon matters genuinely common to the whole federation.

There should be meaningful fiscal autonomy.

Meaningful Borneonisation.

Protection of indigenous lands and institutions.

Demographic and electoral security.

Meaningful Borneo parliamentary representation.

Effective consent mechanisms.

And enforceable constitutional safeguards which cannot simply disappear through political neglect.

SABAH AND SARAWAK SHOULD SPEAK TO THE WORLD

The next phase should therefore involve building an international-quality documentary case.

Collect the British archives.

Open Malaysian records.

Audit every MA63 and IGC safeguard.

Examine the UN Malaysia Mission.

Study Resolutions 1514 and 1541.

Examine UNDRIP.

Document Project IC and the demographic question.

Calculate Sabah’s financial entitlements.

Examine territorial waters, petroleum, Labuan and parliamentary representation.

Then present the evidence professionally.

To international jurists.

Universities.

Parliamentarians.

Indigenous organisations.

Human-rights institutions.

Civil society.

And appropriate United Nations mechanisms.

Not to manufacture hostility against Malaysia.

But to ensure that Sabah and Sarawak’s historical and constitutional questions can no longer be treated merely as inconvenient domestic political complaints.

MALAYSIA SHOULD NOT FEAR THIS

Some will immediately accuse anyone who speaks of internationalising MA63 of disloyalty.

That response misses the point.

Malaysia itself arose from an international agreement and a decolonisation process involving Britain, Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, Singapore and the United Nations.

Why then should examination of that international history be forbidden?

A confident Malaysia should say:

Open the documents.

Examine the history.

Test the legal arguments.

Audit the promises.

Correct what was not performed.

And negotiate a better settlement where the old one no longer works.

That is confidence.

Suppressing questions is not.

MALAYSIA DAY MUST BECOME MORE THAN A CEREMONY

Today there will be speeches about unity.

There will be flags.

There will be reminders that Sabah and Sarawak helped create Malaysia.

All of that has its place.

But after sixty-three years, Sabahans deserve something more substantial than annual recognition every 16 September.

We deserve answers.

Was the founding bargain faithfully performed?

Were our safeguards implemented?

Were our security assurances honoured?

Were our constitutional financial rights respected?

Were the indigenous peoples of Sabah adequately protected?

Was Sabah permitted to develop in proportion to the immense wealth extracted from its territory?

And does the present federal structure still reflect the partnership envisioned in 1963?

Those questions will not disappear because they make people uncomfortable.

They will grow.

The choice before Malaysia is therefore not between discussing MA63 and forgetting MA63.

The real choice is between:

A MALAYSIA PERMANENTLY HAUNTED BY AN UNFINISHED FOUNDING BARGAIN

and

A MALAYSIA CONFIDENT ENOUGH TO REOPEN THAT BARGAIN, CORRECT ITS FAILURES AND BUILD A FAIRER CONSTITUTIONAL FUTURE.

BoPiMaFo chooses the second.

We want a Malaysia worth preserving.

But preservation cannot mean freezing every constitutional imbalance forever.

Malaysia should survive because Sabahans, Sarawakians and Malayans continue freely to believe that the federation is fair, dignified and beneficial to all its peoples.

That is the Malaysia Day conversation we should now begin.

Not next year.

Now.

SELAMAT HARI MALAYSIA.

DANIEL JOHN JAMBUN

Borneo’s Plight in Malaysia Foundation (BoPiMaFo)

16 September 2026

Primary references:

Malaysia Agreement 1963; Inter-Governmental Committee Report; Federal Constitution; United Nations General Assembly Resolutions 1514 (XV) and 1541 (XV); United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; United Nations Malaysia Mission materials; Cobbold Commission Report; relevant British archival records and United Nations Treaty Series materials.