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KUCHING: Parti Sarawak Bersatu (PSB) is demanding a response from the Gabungan government Parti Sarawak (GPS) for allegedly sacrificing Sarawak’s oil and gas rights with its deal with Petroliam Nasional Berhad (Petronas) recently on the State Sales Tax (SST).
Noting that his party was shocked by the sacrifice of Sarawak’s property for his oil and gas, Dato Sri Wong Soon Koh said he had asked for an explanation from the Chief Minister about accepting the validity of the Oil Development Act of 1974 (PDA) and recognize that Petronas had full authority over the state’s oil and gas.
In response to his call two days ago, the PSB President said that the state’s de facto minister of law, Datuk Sharifah Hasidah Sayeed Aman Ghazali, had alluded to “Sarawak’s rights protected by the Federal Constitution, the Malaysian Accord of 1963 and the Recommendations of the Intergovernmental Committee Report 1962. “
He added that Sharifah Hasidah, who is Assistant Minister in the Department of the Chief Minister (Law, State-Federal Relationship and Project Monitoring), also said: “The GPS State Government remains firmly committed to upholding the sovereign rights of Sarawak to oil and to gas resources of the State “.
In this regard, Wong said: “This raises the question of why the GPS government capitulated and renounced the rights of our State to question the validity of the Oil Development Act of 1974.”
Wong said this question was specifically expressed by him in a press release that Sharifah Hasidah intended to answer.
“Why did the GPS government and the Chief Minister avoid answering my question? Didn’t the GPS continually scream that the 1974 PDA was invalid as far as Sarawak was concerned? Weren’t there cries for sovereignty over our oil rights that PDA 1974 was supposed to have eroded illegally? Wong asked.
“However, in this so-called” settlement “with Petronas for which Petronas paid a fraction of what is owed to Sarawak, why did GPS find it necessary to sacrifice Sarawak’s rights to challenge the 1974 PDA?”
Wong, who was the second deputy finance minister, said the Sarawakians were entitled to a response from the GPS government.
The state government had Petronas issue a joint statement last Friday to announce that they had reached an agreement in which the national oil corporation had agreed to pay the RM2 billion SST owed to the state.
He said they were withdrawing their lawsuits from each other and, in addition, Sarawak had agreed to reduce the TSM rate imposed on the corporation from the current five percent in stages.
The statement was signed by Sharifah Hasidah and Petronas President Datuk Ahmad Nizam Salleh.
To ensure that the trade solution was implemented smoothly, the Federal Minister of Works and the Minister of Finance are tasked with chairing a working committee to oversee the matter, according to the statement.
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