Kit Siang queries Pairin on RCI Report Committee

Opposition fears Pairin’s Working Committee on RCI Report was set up to avoid it being debated in the Sabah Assembly and Parliament.

KOTA KINABALU: DAP elder statesman Lim Kit Siang wants to know whether there’s any country in the world that has produced a report like the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) Report on Sabah.

The Report, the DAP Parliamentary Leader and Gelang Patah MP points out in a statement, is “replete with conflicts, contradictions, non-findings, omissions, including over 6,000 missing pages, that another high-level committee has to be set up to read it and to try to understand it”.

Nevertheless, he wants Sabah Deputy Chief Minister Joseph Pairin Kitingan who heads the Working Committee to study the Report to break his silence and answer several questions.

These are: whether he has accepted the appointment and started work as Chairman of the Working Committee on the RCI Report; the list of full members of the committee; the first meeting of the committee; the regularity of its meetings; deadline for the committee to complete and submit its report to the Permanent Committee on the Report headed by Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and Sabah Chief Minister Musa Aman; whether he and his committee members will have full access to 6,000 pages missing from the Report; whether the committee can ensure that the missing 6,000 pages will be published for public study; and what is the priority business of the committee.

He also wants to know whether Pairin would ask the Sabah Chief Minister to convene an emergency meeting of the Sabah Assembly within the next 30 days to debate the Report; whether the committee can ensure that the authorities would recall all ICs in Sabah and carry out a state-wide re-registration exercise of ICs to flush out all illegal and fake documentation; and whether the committee can ensure that there will be a two-day full debate on the Report when Parliament reconvenes on March 9.

The DAP leader fears that Pairin’s committee was set up to avoid scrutiny by the Sabah Assembly and Parliament.

Lim noted that the RCI Panel spent 20 months to hold public hearings, and called 211 witnesses.

“Their evidence covered more than 5,000 pages, public memoranda, 177 exhibits including charts, pictures, statistics, letters, official directives, commentaries and articles which must have exceeded over 1,000 pages,” he added. “But the Panel produced a mere 368-page Report so replete with conflicts, contradictions, non-findings, and 6,000 missing pages.”

“It is a marvel that the Cabinet sat on the Report for some six months and did not know what to do with it. Umno/Barisan Nasional just wants the status quo to continue undisturbed.”

The Report was presented to the Agong on May 14, recalls Lim in delving into recent history, and finally Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak acceded to public pressure from political parties both in Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat for its public release on December 3 “but after Parliament had adjourned to avoid a debate and scrutiny”.