KUCHING, July 10 — Sarawak Pakatan Harapan (PH) hopes assemblymen from the state ruling alliance will oppose amendments to the Sarawak Land Code expected to be tabled tomorrow.
The Bill, to be tabled by Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Douglas Uggah in the state legislative assembly, seeks to amend the land code but has been vehemently rejected by Dayak-based civil societies and community leaders as it touches on issue of their usufructuary rights to territorial domain.
Usufruct, from the property term usus and fructus, is a limited real right in civil law and mixed jurisdictions. Usus from the word “use” means the right to use or enjoy a thing possessed, directly and without altering it, while fructus from the word “fruit” refers to the right to derive profit from a thing owned.
“We pray that they will change their minds by tomorrow,” state PH deputy chairman Baru Bian said at a press conference today.
However, Baru, who is also the federal works minister, will not be able to participate in the debate as he has to attend the federal Cabinet meeting tomorrow, while Chong Chieng Jen, who is also deputy domestic trade and consumers affairs minister, has to attend to his ministry’s post-Cabinet meeting.
Baru noted that the Land Code (Amendment) Bill 2018, purportedly seeks to recognise the pemakai menoa (territorial domain) and pulau galau (communal forest reserves) concept of acquiring native customary rights over land in Sarawak.
But he said it fails to recognise and assert the fundamental characteristics of the concept as affirmed by landmark cases from other jurisdictions and Malaysia’s jurisdiction which hold that aboriginal people’s rights included an interest in the land and not merely an usufructuary right.
Baru, who is also state PKR chairman, also expressed state PH’s disappointment that the Bill seeks to limit the size of territorial domain to 500 hectares.
“It is our stand is that our NCR land or pemakai menoa and pulau galau cannot be restricted or limited to an area defined by the authority.
“The extent of the territorial domain should be in accordance with the area that the natives had continuously occupied since the time of their forefathers to this day,” he said, adding that he, while representing the NCR landowners in court, had won cases where their pemakai menoa and pulau galau extend beyond 10,000 hectares.
He said limiting the size of two types of lands is unjust, unfair and immorally wrong.
