KUCHING, Dec 10 — Sarawak PKR wants action taken against a Pakatan Harapan (PH) federal minister if it is true that he wants the Sarawak Land Code to be replaced with the National Land Code.
Its vice chairman Boniface Willy anak Tumek said it is not enough for Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas to rebuke the federal minister over the suggestion.
“Uggah should be capable of taking more drastic action than a mere light slap on the wrist,” he said, and asked the deputy chief minister to reveal the name of the PH minister who made the suggestion.
“It would not be farfetched to say such a suggestion would not have been made unless senior leaders in the PH government had been thinking about it,” he said.
Speaking at a meet-the-people session in an Iban longhouse last Saturday night, Uggah claimed that a PH minister had conveyed a message to him for Sarawak to adopt the National Land Code at a recent meeting in Putrajaya.
Uggah said he rejected the suggestion which he described as not only preposterous but ignoring the peculiarities and complexities surrounding land issues in the state.
The deputy chief minister also said land was a state’s right under the State List of the Federal Constitution and guaranteed under the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63).
Willy stressed that the National Land Code is that body of law that governs all land matters in the federated Malayan states, while the Sarawak Land Code governs all land matters in the state.
“Sarawak PKR finds it extremely offensive and hard to believe that a PH federal minister had the temerity to suggest something as audacious as replacing the Sarawak Land Code, one symbol of the autonomy of Sarawak as spelt out in MA63, with another law that symbolises colonialism,” he said.
Willy said land matters, even before the formation of Malaysia, was a matter for the government of Sarawak to administer, and that replacing the Sarawak Land Code with the National Land Code would be unthinkable.
