KOTA KINABALU, May 27 — Former chief minister Tan Sri Musa Aman denied today giving Malaysian identity cards to undocumented immigrants, telling his successor to look for credible solutions instead of blaming him.
The Sungai Sibuga assemblyman issued a statement saying that the Warisan government goes on the defensive and uses diversion tactics whenever it faces controversy about illegal immigrants.
“In this case, they have conveniently decided to pick on me for political mileage. I unequivocally deny any involvement in Project IC. Neither the authorities nor the RCI have found me guilty of any involvement.
“The Deputy Home Minister, Azis Jamman, decided to engage in political mischief by falsely alleging my involvement in Project IC,” he said, referring to a recent statement by Datuk Azis Jamman who had said that Musa was named in the Royal Commission of Inquiry report on illegal immigrants as well as a book by Chong Eng Leong.
Azis in his statement last week said that the book and the report claimed that such an exercise to give citizenship to non-deserving individuals was to increase the votes for the previous government and named Musa, who had never denied the claims or sued the writer.
Musa today said he did not sue the author of the book because the allegations were “so absurd and false” that there was no need to dignify them with a response, and that he was busy administering the government.
He, however, said that Sabahans were justified in the suspicions and fears that documentation was being granted to illegal immigrants in the state.
“This serious threat to Sabah’s security only surfaced since after Warisan dubiously came into power last year.
“This concern is real, especially in light of the various news and social media postings which have reported the unusually frequent breakout of kampong fires in major squatters settlements throughout Sabah followed by stories of NRD mobile trucks turning up soon after and issuing new documents to the ‘fire victims’,” he said.
Musa said that the state government’s proposed policies, such as to establish squatter colonies on border islands for refugees, did not help in alleviating the people’s growing suspicion.
He said the move by police to open an investigation into the “Citizen Drive” linked to Warisan was a good move and also proposed an investigation paper on the multitude of major squatter fires that started as early as June last year.
“We have nothing against giving bona fide documents being issued to foreigners who have lived here for a considerable period of time. This is not a race issue.
“We are against the provision of documents such as MyKads to illegal immigrants who have encroached our borders recently and become fly by night citizens,” he said.
Last week, Azis said that syndicates were involved in distributing fake MyKad applications with the Warisan logo on it that was not only false, but had damaged the party’s name.
He said that syndicates took advantage of allegations made by opposition parties that Warisan was giving out citizenship in order to profit off individuals desperate enough to pay for such fake applications.
