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PETALING JAYA: Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr has claimed that Philippine presidential candidates made offers of “huge” bribes to officials over the years to withdraw their claim on Sabah, reigniting a dispute. long-standing diplomatic with Malaysia.
“The Philippine public must know that what is offered is enormous, so the temptation to betray is proportionally enormous,” he said yesterday on his Twitter account.
In a series of tweets, Locsin claimed that there have been repeated offers from aspiring presidential candidates since the late 1970s to drop the Filipino claim on Sabah, adding that these candidates were generally from the opposition and in need of campaign funds.
This comes after the Philippine House foreign affairs committee asked last week for the Philippine map, which shows a 200-mile exclusive economic zone that included Sabah, to be printed on Philippine passports.
The Philippines has a long-standing claim to Sabah based on the Sultan of Sulu’s historic ownership of what used to be North Borneo.
For its part, Malaysia has said that it does not recognize and will never admit any claim by either party to Sabah, which officially became part of Malaysia during the country’s formation in 1963.
Malaysia’s permanent mission to the United Nations submitted a note last Friday saying that Kuala Lumpur “has never recognized the Republic of the Philippines’ claim to the Malaysian state of Sabah, formerly known as North Borneo.”
In July, Locsin tweeted that Sabah is not in Malaysia, a statement that his Malaysian counterpart, Foreign Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, said was “irresponsible” and would affect bilateral relations.
While Locsin told Filipino media last Thursday that he did not want to spoil diplomatic relations with Malaysia, he insisted that the Philippines would not give up its claim on Sabah.
“While we have always strived not to let this affect our relations with Malaysia, well, it is up to them. But we will certainly never give up, ”he said.
“As the sovereign successor to the Sultanate of Sulu, the Philippines has legal ownership and sovereignty over northern Borneo, or what I call the tropical island of Borneo.”
