PENAMPANG, Jan 25 — The Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) on the Batu Puteh case is to assess weaknesses in the case management, said Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said.
The law and institutional reform minister said that there was a task force set up to look into the issue, but there were constraints on conducting further investigations, so the RCI is a follow-up action to further investigate the matter.
“We need to evaluate what happened,” she said at a press conference after launching the “Justice On Wheels” programme at Kampung Madsiang here today.
Azalina said the Batu Puteh issue, like the Sulu claim issue in Sabah, are a matter of national sovereignty which is a high priority for Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
“The prime minister is very concerned about sovereignty. What happened with Batu Puteh cannot happen again.
“We want to know what happened and where did we go wrong. It must be understood that the issue of sovereignty cannot be decided by one person alone; we cannot make mistakes, and we need to learn from the past,” she said.
In 2008, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) decided that Batu Puteh belonged to Singapore, and Malaysia applied to the ICJ requesting an interpretation of the judgment in 2017.
In 2018, the Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad led administration withdrew an application to overturn the ICJ ruling.
Last year, a special task force set up to study the case found that Dr Mahathir might have made a mistake in withdrawing the application.
Because of its complex nature involving maritime borders and islands, Azalina said that the RCI will also help to establish a process and procedures for sovereignty issues and which agency is responsible for sovereignty.
“Whether it is the National Security Council or the Cabinet, it must be established. But we cannot come up with a specific process without the overall outcome from the task force,” she said, adding that the RCI was a more open process.
She said her ministry would present the National Immunity Act to protect the country from any threats to its sovereignty in the upcoming parliamentary session.
“The Sulu claim and the Batu Puteh are examples. This is why in this Parliament session, I will bring the state Immunity Act up, so that we can have the highest protection against claims from other nations,” said Azalina.
“But the government is very fair; we want to investigate what went wrong, where we went wrong so that we can correct it. Just like the Sulu claim case, whether we like it or not, the government has made mistakes,” she said.
The Pengerang MP said a stable government was imperative to defend against national sovereignty threats.
“Only when there is instability can cases such as the Sulu claim case in Sabah happen as there are opportunistic parties that want to destabilise the government, she said.
She urged the people to let the government finish its term before the 16th general election (GE16) before they evaluate who they wanted to vote for.
