THE SULU SULTANATE'S HEIR STAND-OFF IS NOT WELCOMED BY THE FILIPINOS IN SABAH

ZAMBOANGA CITY : Malaysian employers have laid off a number of Filipino workers in Sabah in light of the tensions created by the “homecoming” of the heirs of the sultanate of Sulu and armed members of their “royal army” to press their proprietary claims over the eastern portion of the island, relatives of the workers and local officials in Mindanao said.

Among the first to be laid off was Myrna de la Cruz of Isabela City in Basilan,reports the Philippine Inquirer

Madeline, 18, Myrna’s daughter, said she received a call from her mother early this week to inform her that she was sacked by her Malaysian employer as a laundry attendant in Tawau.

Myrna had been working in Tawau for nearly two decades already before the Lahad Datu stand-off started on Feb 12, three days after Agbimuddin Kiram, the sultate’s crown prince and younger bother of Sultan Jamalul Kiram III, and his followers arrived.

“She told me her employer advised her to go home so she would not be implicated in the Lahad Datu situation,” Madeline told the Inquirer by phone.

Ramir Abdulhalil, a 20-year-old college student from Patikul, Sulu, said his father also informed the family he and three other colleagues had lost their jobs last week at an oil palm plantation in Sempornah, also in Sabah.

“The tension in Sabah was the most likely reason for the loss of my father’s job,” Ramir said, adding his father decided to come home instead of trying to find another job there.

The government has said the stand-off in Sabah between Malaysian security forces and the so-called Sulu “royal army” has put the jobs of Filipinos in Malaysia at risk.

Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas II  told Manila reporters as early as last week that while the government was trying to help address the tension, brought about by the renewed ownership claim of the heirs of the erstwhile sultanate over  Sabah, Malaysian employers might view Filipinos as not trustworthy.

According to government data, about 800,000 Filipinos work in various Malaysian states. Most of them are in Sabah, where they have been tolerated for decades even if they didn’t possess working documents because of the historically close, even familial, ties between Sabahans and residents of Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.

There were more unverified reports of Filipinos losing their jobs in the wake of the Lahad Datu stand-off, according to acting governor Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

If the termination of Filipino employees has indeed become a way for Malaysian employers to show they were standing up for their country and its territory, local officials said a much larger problem lies ahead.

Sulu governo Abdusakur Tan admitted that the provincial government has no means to accommodate those who will be displaced if more Filipinos were sent home by their Malaysian employers.

“There is no job for them here. Many of them did not even have houses here,” Tan said by phone.

He said the influx of jobless Tausugs, many of whom were not even raised here, from Sabah would create a serious problem besides raising  local unemployment figures.

“They might contribute to social and peace and order problems in the future,” Tan said.

- See more at: http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2013/03/01/filipinos-losing-jobs-in-sabah-following-standoff/#sthash.GpJkhpn0.dpuf

PAKATAN GIVES UP ON SAPP

(The Star) - Pakatan Rakyat and Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) have ended their recent months of courtship with two top Parti Keadilan Rakyat leaders saying that “we will go separate ways.”

PKR deputy-president Azmin Ali and vice-president Tian Chua made it clear yesterday that there will be no more negotiations with SAPPpresident Datuk Yong Teck Lee for a seat-sharing pact to confront Barisan Nasional in a one-to-one fight in the general election.

Tian Chua described SAPP's continued demands for a large share of state seats during negotiations as “unreasonable and reflects their insincerity and commitment towards an Opposition pact to oust Barisan in Sabah.

“If SAPP maintains that they must be given a large share of the seats which makes it impossible for an agreement to be reached, we can only interpret it as their not being interested in the cooperation.

“This means we have to go separate ways,” he told a press conference here yesterday.

Tian Chua dismissed the possibility of the opposition losing the support of Sabah voters if local-based SAPP was excluded from the Pakatan pact as he believed it would have minimal impact on them.

“In the coming polls, the people will choose between Barisan and Pakatan.

“Any other force will not have any substantial impact on the choice of the voters,” he said.

He said that Pakatan was willing to work with any party in Sabah to remove Barisan from Putrajaya.

“Pakatan parties are willing to cooperate with all forces if they are genuinely committed to our common struggle to topple Barisan,” he added.

Tian Chua's public stand on SAPP was in tangent with Azmin's statement to an online news portal which quoted him as saying that SAPP was “completely out of the list and out of our formula” as far as seat negotiations were involved because of the party's unreasonable demands.

Azmin stated that Pakatan was close to concluding a seat-sharing deal with its new Sabah allies Angkatan Perubahan Sabah (APS) and Pertubuhan Pakatan Perubahan Sabah (PPPS).

APS is led by Tuaran MP Datuk Seri Wilfred Bumburing, the former deputy president of Upko while PPPS is led by Datuk Lajim Ukin, the Beaufort MP and former Umno supreme council member.

Pakatan party leaders including Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had previously agreed in principle to work out a seat-sharing agreement with SAPP for the 60 state and 25 parliament seats in Sabah.

Besides having problems with SAPP, the Pakatan parties also face problems in working out a seat deal with Sabah STAR, led by Datuk Dr Jeffrey Kitingan who is pushing for a Sabah for Sabahans agenda.

Both SAPP and Sabah STAR believed that state-based parties should be allowed to contest the bulk of the state seats while Pakatan parties should focus on parliament seats.