Who’s to blame for ‘Sabah massacre’?

By NESTOR MATA
MALAYA

‘President Noynoy Aquino’s hands are now filled with the blood of our Filipino Muslim brothers who were killed by Malaysian police and military forces in Sabah.’

NOBODY but nobody else can be blamed for the massacre of our Muslim brothers who were attacked by superior Malaysian police and military forces last week than President Noynoy Aquino himself.

First of all, instead of protecting them, which is his bounden constitutional duty to do as president of the Philippines, Aquino left them instead to the merciless hands of the Malaysians. And now, figuratively speaking, his hands are dripping with the blood of those Filipino citizens.

He also ignored or failed to understand that our Muslim brothers, led by Rajah Agbimuddin Kiram, were sent to Sabah by Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiriam III not only to “reclaim their homeland” but also to reassert the territorial claim for the Philippines.

So, for failing to discharge his mandated constitutional duties and creating the wrong impression that, by his statements and actions and inaction, he is siding with Malaysia, an adversary in the long-simmering dispute involving our country ownership and sovereignty rights over the territory of North Borneo, now called Sabah, Aquino has exposed himself to the possibility of being impeached for betrayal of public trust when he described the struggle to reclaim Sabah as “a hopeless case.”

Long before that horrifying massacre in Sabah, when he assumed the presidency three years ago, Aquino has failed to defend and implement Article I of the 1987 Constitution (yes, the Charter that was drafted and ratified during his mother Cory Cojuangco Aquino presidency!) that defined the national territory of the Philippines to be “all the islands and waters embraced therein, and all other territories over which the Philippines has sovereignty or jurisdiction, consisting of its territorial, fluvial and aerial domains, including its territorial sea, the seabed, the subsoil, the insular shelves and other submarine areas.”

Not only this, Aquino, too, has not carried out R.A. 5446 which defined the country’s territory, including Sabah, particularly Section 2 that stated: “The definition of the baselines of the territorial sea of the Philippine Archipelago… is without prejudice to the delineation of the baselines of the territorial sea around the territory of Sabah, situated in North Borneo, over which the Republic of the Philippines has acquired dominion and sovereignty.” And these rights of dominion and sovereignty were upheld by the Supreme Court.

What’s called Sabah today, as we all know, seemingly except Aquino and his ignorant executive and foreign policy advisers, was North Borneo, the northeastern part of the territory, granted by the Sultan of Brunei to the Sultanate of Sulu as a prize for helping him against his enemies and from then on that part of the Sulu Sultan’s sovereignty. That was long. long before the Spanish conquistadors occupied the Philippines, except that territory owned the Sulu Sultanate. In 1878, the reigning sultan then leased the territory to a British company until the formation of the Federation of Malaysia, which continued to pay rental money to the heirs of the Sultanate of Sulu, an act that the British government used to do before it formed the federation in 1963.

A year before, in 1962, the sovereignty, title and dominion over the territory were ceded by the then reigning Sultan of Sulu Esmail E. Kiram I to the Republic of the Philippines during the time of President Diosddo Macapagal, father of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Aquino’s hated predecessor. That cession effectively gave the Philippine government the full authority to pursue their claim in international courts, but there was a condition that should the government fail to pursue its claim the Sultan would reclaim his rights of sovereignty over the territory. And then the Philippines broke diplomatic relations with Malaysia when it included Sabah in 1963, but eventually diplomatic ties were resumed in 1989 because succeeding administrations placed the Philippine claim in the back burner in their pursuit of cordial economic and security relations with Kuala Lumpur.

That’s exactly what the present administration has been doing ever since President Aquino came to power. He continued to put the claim in the backburner, which, as a former diplomat put it, “is not a policy, but an illusion, a mirage.” He has not only failed to pursue the Philippine claim as mandated by law, but, in his ongoing attempts to forge a peace pact for Mindanao, he ignored the Sultanate of Sulu, who was thus compelled to sent his brother, along with other Filipino Muslims “to reclaim our homeland” in Sabah, when he (Aquino) failed to prosecute his claim. And this was followed by what may well be called the “Sabah crisis.”

And now, for failing to discharge his constitutional duties in protecting the lives of our Muslim brothers, who are Filipino citizens, upholding the country’s territory and sovereignty, and “taking the side” of Malaysia, as one pundit bluntly wrote, “Noynoy Aquino should be encouraged to vacate the Office of the Presidency before he inflicts further irreparable injury upon the national interest!”. .

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Quote of the Day: “The first function of a political leader is advocacy. It is he who must articulate the wants, the frustration, and the aspiration of the people.” – Anon.

Thought of the Day: “A true leader is one who’ll tell his people, ‘If I advance, follow me! If I retreat , kill me! If I die, avenge me!’ “ – La Rochejacquelein