It was a time, more than 50 years ago, when the map of Southeast Asia was not yet clearly drawn. Which territories belonged to what nation-states?
The Americans had “given” independence to the Philippines in 1946. While Indonesia had “declared” independence from the Dutch a year earlier (1945) they actually got it, after their revolution, three years later (1949).
This was 1962 now and the British did not seem to be quite sure what to do with the remainder of their Asian territories – after it had had to give up on India in 1949 and Malaya in 1957.
The remaining territories covered big expanses of land and water and were geographically, culturally and in many other ways closer to the Philippines and Indonesia both of whom had historic sovereign claims on one or the other of these former colonies.
Background 1: the U.N. Decolonization Context
Under the United Nations Charter, in that post-World War age of decolonization, it was the duty of every colonial power administering non-self-governing areas to submit to the United Nations every year a report of its administration of the territory under their control or protection.
Chapter XI, Article 73 b of the United Nations Charter obliged the administering [colonial] power “to develop self-government, take due account of the political aspirations of the non-self-governing (colonized) peoples and assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions.”
Britain, following these impositions by the UN Charter, declared herself to be the colonial power administering Sarawak. It submitted to the United Nations every year a report on how she administered her non-self-governing territories. It is worth noting, however, that in such reports she never included North Borneo.
Background 2: the Cold War Context
The end of World War II ushered in not only this age of decolonization but also the contest for dominance between Communism led by Russia and China on one hand and the so-called “Free World” led by the USA and Great Britain on the other hand. The big decisions were influenced if not determined by these themes.
In the “Free World” view, nationalism or the struggle against imperialism and colonialism was fine. But when a nationalist movement was “infiltrated” or, worse, “led” by communists, then it was no longer fine because it could end up in the worse slavery of communism – freedom’s new enemy. Decolonization, therefore, must be managed well – according to the US and the UK.
They were worried about the balance of power in Asia then between the “Free World” forces and the forces of communism. They considered the situation very precarious and critical despite their crushing of the Huks in the Philippines and the neutralization of ethnic Chinese communists in Malaya. Laos had turned “neutralist” which the US and the UK interpreted to be a step closer to “communist.” Cambodia was leaning closer to the side of “Red” China. Vietnam was a bloody fight between North and South. India’s borders, too, were allegedly being invaded by Red China. If now Sarawak, Brunei, North Borneo and Singapore, would be “lost” by their turning communist or neutralist, the peace and security of the free world countries in Asia including the Philippines would be even more gravely imperiled.
The British Plan
Thus the British hatched a Plan – to grant “self-government” to Sarawak, Brunei and North Borneo with a view to safeguarding them against communist infiltration and subversion. Britain would decolonize and honor the nationalist movements of the areas. It would “relinquish sovereignty” over Sarawak and North Borneo, “withdraw protection” (control) over Brunei and then get these three would-be newly “independent states” to join the 11 states of Malaya and Singapore in forming what they proposed to dub the “Federation of Malaysia.”
The idea was to enlarge the Federation of Malaya by bringing in Singapore, Sarawak, Brunei and North Borneo as new members. Thus enlarged there would be a new name for the new Federation – “Malaysia.” More significantly, they could retain the mutual defense pact concluded with Malaya and extend it to this enlarged Federation of Malaysia. This was what the Plan was all about.
Other Plans and the Claim to Sabah
But another Plan had been thought out somewhere else – not by imperial Britain but by newly independent Philippines. President Macapagal proposed to establish the Greater Confederation of Malay States. The proposed members were Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, Brunei, North Borneo and the Philippines. In this Greater Confederation plan the proposed members would retain their separate sovereignties.
The fly in the ointment, however, was the Philippines’ claim to Sabah.
What was the background and the legal basis for this claim? And what territory precisely was the claimant talking about?
Senator Jovito R. Salonga explained it best in the halls of the Philippine Senate:[1] He said:
Thousands of years ago, what is now known as the Philippines and what is known today as Borneo used to constitute a single historical, cultural, economic unit. Authoritative Western scientists have traced the land bridges that connected these two places. The inhabitants of the Philippines and Borneo come from the same racial stock, they have the same color; they have or used to have similar customs and traditions. Borneo is only 18 miles away from us today.
In contrast, the territories of Borneo are separated by South China Sea from Malaya by varying distances, from about 500 miles to well over a thousand. Jesselton (Kota Kinabalu) is much nearer to Saigon or to Manila than to Kuala Lumpur.
The Cession of Territory by the Sultan of Brunei to the Sultan of Sulu:
North Borneo, formerly known as Sabah, was originally ruled by the Sultan of Brunei. In 1704, in gratitude for help extended to him by the Sultan of Sulu in suppressing a revolt, the Sultan of Brunei ceded North Borneo to the Sulu Sultan.
And this is where the Philippines’ Sabah claim really begins.
It is a historical fact that:
Over the years, the various European countries, including Britain, Spain and the Netherlands acknowledged the Sultan of Sulu as the sovereign ruler of North Borneo. They entered into various treaty arrangements with him.
In 1878, a keen Austrian adventurer, by the name of Baron de Overbeck, having known that the Sultan of Sulu was facing a life-and-death struggle with the Spanish forces in the Sulu Archipelago, went to Sulu, took advantage of the situation and persuaded the Sultan of Sulu to lease to him, in consideration of a yearly rental of Malayan $ 5,000 (roughly equivalent to a meager US $ 1,600), the territory now in question.
The contract of lease — and I[2] call it so on the basis of British documents and records that cannot be disputed here or abroad — contains a technical description of the territory in terms of natural boundaries, thus:
“…all the territories and lands being tributary to us on the mainland of the island of Borneo commencing from the Pandassan River on the NW coast and extending along the whole east coast as far as the Sibuco River in the South and comprising among others the States of Peitan, Sugut, Bangaya, Labuk, Sandakan, Kinabatangan, Muniang and all the other territories and states to the southward thereof bordering on Darvel Bay and as far as the Sibuco River with all the islands within 3 marine leagues of the coast.”
The British North Borneo Company:
Overbeck later sold out all his rights under the contract to Alfred Dent, an English merchant. Dent then established a provisional association and later a Company, known as the British North Borneo Company, which assumed all the rights and obligations under the 1878 contract.
But was not this a merely private company or corporation?
In fact, it was.
[It was a private company that was] awarded a Royal Charter in 1881. A protest against the grant of the charter was lodged by the Spanish and the Dutch Governments and in reply, the British Government clarified its position and stated in unmistakable language – that “sovereignty remains with the Sultan of Sulu” and that the Company was merely an administering authority.
In 1946, the British North Borneo Company transferred all its rights and obligations to the British Crown. And the Crown, on July 10, 1946 — just six days after Philippine independence — asserted full sovereign rights over North Borneo, as of that date.
Former American Governor General Harrison, then Special Adviser to the Philippine Government on Foreign Affairs, denounced the Cession Order as a unilateral act in violation of legal rights.
In 1950, Congressman Macapagal — along with Congressmen Arsenio Lacson and Arturo Tolentino — sponsored a resolution urging the formal institution of the claim to North Borneo.
Prolonged studies were in the meanwhile undertaken and in 1962 the House of Representatives, in rare unanimity, passed a resolution urging the President of the Philippines to recover North Borneo consistent with international law and procedure. Acting on this unanimous resolution and having acquired all the rights and interests of the Sultanate of Sulu, the Republic of the Philippines, through the President, filed the claim to North Borneo.
What then, in brief, are the bases for the Philippine claim?
Salonga explained that the claim is mainly based on the following propositions, that:
Overbeck and Dent, not being sovereign entities nor representing sovereign entities, could not and did not acquire dominion and sovereignty over North Borneo; that on the basis of authoritative British and Spanish documents, the British North Borneo Company, a private trading concern to whom Dent transferred his rights, did not and could not acquire dominion and sovereignty over North Borneo; that their rights were as those indicated in the basic contract, namely, that of a lessee and a mere delegate; that in accordance with established precedents in International Law, the assertion of sovereign rights by the British Crown in 1946, in complete disregard of the contract of 1878 and their solemn commitments, did not and cannot produce legal results in the form of a new tide.
In the earlier speech of Sen. Lorenzo Sumulong[3], the latter pointed out to the Senate and the Filipino people that “since the organization of the United Nations in 1945, Britain in accordance with the obligations imposed by the Charter has declared herself to be the colonial power administering North Borneo as a British colony”. But this was not so.
Salonga had to point out in his rebuttal of the Sumulong statement that:
There is something misleading in this naked assertion. The good Senator could have informed the people, having proclaimed knowledge of all the relevant facts, that the British Crown never considered North Borneo as British territory, nor the North Borneans as British subjects, until July 10, 1946 — six days after the Philippines became independent.
Sumulong in his speech had made a big deal of his favoring “our government giving every possible support to the proprietary claims of the heirs of the late Sultan Jamalul Kiram”- a boastwhich Salonga found hard to believe:
Did he really support the proprietary aspect of the claim since he first became a member of the House of Representatives and assumed the Chairmanship of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs? Probably he did not give much thought to it then. But certainly he must have heard of the Macapagal-Lacson-Tolentino resolution of 1950. Did he give it in the Senate active and real support, even in its proprietary aspects? He has been a member of that distinguished body for more than 12 years — when, how and in what form, (even through a proposed amendment so as to fit his thinking) did he give that support? The cold, lifeless records of Congress yield no evidence of what he now eloquently professes.
Sumulong also said that “the heirs of the Sultan of Sulu” should have gone to the United Nations, presumably to the International Court of Justice, so that if the said heirs lose their case, “there would be no loss of honor or prestige for the Republic of the Philippines.” Salonga’s exasperation was so palpable:
I would commend to the good Senator a closer reading of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, in relation to Chapter 14 of the United Nations Charter. Undoubtedly, he must have known that “the heirs of the Sultan” could not possibly litigate before the International Court of Justice for the simple reason that they have no international legal personality. They do not constitute a State, as that term is understood in law. Chapter 2, Article 34, paragraph 1 of the Statute clearly provides: “Only States may be parties in cases before the Court.”
Point-Counterpoint the two senators from the province of Rizal
debated and explained their well-rounded phrases and expressions before a people that sometimes tended to see them as opposing leaders of the two major parties then, the Nacionalista Party (Sumulong) and the administration Liberal Party (Salonga). Salonga did not like this and had to underscore his feelings on the matter:
I am no apologist for the President of the Philippines, not even on the North Borneo question and will disagree with him whenever I think that his action is not well-advised. But I believe that on such a fundamental question as this, it may be well for us to remember that political considerations, bitterness and endless quibbling should stop at the water’s edge and that the claim to North Borneo is not the claim of the President, nor of the Liberal Party, nor of his Administration, but a claim of the entire Republic, based on respect for the rule of law, the sanctity of contractual obligations, the sacredness of facts and the relentless logic of our situation in this part of the world.
The Sumulong Bottom-line
The Sumulong statements, given on the eve of the talks in London on the Philippines’ claim to Sabah, were consistently derogatory of the Philippine stand. They were seized upon by the English press with great delight, as if to show to the Philippine panel led by Vice-President Pelaez and Salonga how well-informed the Nacionalista Senator was. Whether Sumulong knew it or not, the British, in an admirable show of unity, enjoyed and were immensely fascinated by his press releases and statements.
Sumulong’s views berated the merit and validity of the Philippine Republic’s claim, accusing his own Government of gross ignorance and holding in unbelievable disdain the Philippine position on the British-sponsored Malaysia plan. He chose to assault the Philippine position at a time when his own Government was somewhat helpless in making, right in our own country, an adequate, fully-documented defense of the Philippine stand, by virtue of the request of the British panel during the London Conference that the documents and the records of the proceedings be considered confidential, until they could be declassified in the normal course of diplomatic procedure.
By his own admission, Sumulong attended closed-door hearings of the Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and National Defense, where crucial matters of national survival and security were taken up. He knew the classified, confidential nature of the records and documents bearing on the Philippine claim.
And yet Salonga never came close to accusing Sumulong of treason or diminished patriotism. Sumulong’s mantra was always this: if the Philippine claim does not prosper it would be a great shame on our country.
In extremely charitable reply, Salonga could only say:
Were we to follow the logic of the good Senator, we might conclude that America, Britain, France, the Netherlands and other countries have no more prestige and honor to keep since they have, as a matter of cold fact, lost quite a number of cases before international bodies and tribunals. But, of course, the conclusion is wrong. For respect for the rule of law has never meant and should never mean loss of honor and prestige.
In the end, Sumulong had but one suggestion:
“…for our government to inform the United Nations in due time, i.e., when the Federation of Malaysia Plan is submitted for consideration in the United Nations, that we are voluntarily relinquishing whatever claims of sovereignty we may have to any portion of North Borneo in order to accelerate the changing of its status from a non-self-governing territory to that of a self-governing or independent State and that we favor holding a plebiscite under UN auspices to give the people of North Borneo the opportunity to freely express their will and wishes…”
In short, Sumulong would have the Republic tell the world that we are abandoning our claim; let Malaya take over North Borneo under the so-called Malaysia Federation, then ask for a referendum in North Borneo to ascertain what the North Borneans want. Fumed Salonga:
This, to my mind, is a proposal so naive it does not do justice to the reputation of the distinguished Senator or to the depth and range of his studies.
In the first place, a Federation plan need not be approved by the United Nations. In the second place, a sophisticated study of the results of a plebiscite under the circumstances set forth by the distinguished Senator (and having in mind the plebiscites that have already been held, where there was indeed no choice but to say “yes” to what the British and Malayans wanted) forecloses the kind of result that will be achieved. For so long the North Borneans have been under British tutelage; the Malaysia plan is British-conceived, British-inspired and British-sponsored; Malaya is raring to take over a territory whose native inhabitants, according to the Cobbold Report, have a low level of education and political consciousness and who were ready to agree to the Malaysia proposals “although they were not fully understood.” Now, what kind of free elections does the Senator expect to witness in North Borneo?
In fine, the Senator would have the Republic launch a program of defeat — born of fear and doubt and timidity. I cannot agree to such a plan of action.
Then, in a prophetic pitch only a few politicians were capable of at that time, Salonga intoned:
We have told the British that we agree that their interests in the region should be respected and that we welcome any practical arrangements to this end. But this should not take the form of colonialism in a different guise which, instead of being a factor of stability becomes the source of endless provocation. The Philippines is here in Southeast Asia to stay; Britain, saddled with various commitments, probably desires to play a lesser role in Southeast Asia and make a graceful exit; Malaya, a distant stranger to the region, desires a virtual annexation of the Bornean territories to sterilize and quarantine Singapore, the “key base”, which is predominantly Chinese and, whose loyalties are not beneath suspicion.
Feeling that the inevitable could happen, Salonga would not let the Sumulongs of our country too easily off the hook of responsibility:
The good Senator (Sumulong) realizes, of course, that if North Borneo should fall into hostile hands, it is the Philippines that will be immediately affected. And yet until we filed our claim to North Borneo and talks were conducted thereafter in London culminating in an official cognizance of our claim, there was no attempt at all to consult with us on matters that affect the very survival and security of this country. It is only … [but] If between now and August 31,1963, the scheduled date of birth of the Malaysia Federation, these countries should stiffen in their attitude towards our claim, I must state in all candor that for all my respect for him and even assuming the nobility of his motives, the good Senator cannot fully escape the burden of responsibility.
When the Salonga rebuttal of the Sumulong British line was delivered in March 1963 British high officials were still debating among themselves what to do with the claim. His charge of “British imperialism” must have weighed heavily in the minds of the British. After the delivery of this speech, the British hurried to organize the Federation of Malaysia and assigned their rights to the Federation in September 1963. And as foreseen in the Salonga speech there would be fundamental disagreements, particularly with Singapore, within the so-called Federation.
Sukarno in the meantime carried out a policy of armed confrontation with Malaysia, then under the Tungku Abdul Rahman. Largely through the efforts of President Diosdado Macapagal, Maphilindo was born, composed of Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. How to settle the Sabah claim of the Philippines through peaceful means was one of the items in the Tokyo Maphilindo Summit of June 1964.
It was agreed that the Sabah claim would be settled by peaceful means, but the “verbal understanding” between the Tungku and Macapagal regarding the elevation of the case to the International Court of Justice, was denied later by Malaysia – of course. Meantime, Singapore, one of the component states of the Federation of Malaysia, was advised to leave the Federation. On August 9, 1965, the city state suddenly found itself independent, under Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.
But the Sabah claim subsists up to this day. Put in the freezer because of the installation of ASEAN following the failure of Maphilindo, the Philippines under Marcos was accused of pursuing it by the organization of the clandestine (Major Eduardo “Abdul Latif” Martelino) Martelino-led invasion forces.
“Offense being the best defense” Malaysia has countered for a few decades now by actively helping, fomenting, funding and arming Muslim separatists in Mindanao to the point of having now convinced Sumulong’s grandnephew, PNoy, to be extraordinarily friendly to the united front of Malaysia and Muslim separatism. This is the way they have defined “Peace” and any other definition means “War.” PNoy has bought into it. Others are blunter: “they have bought PNoy into it.”
Yes, the
Sabah issue persists. We cannot afford to be ignorant about its complications
and ramifications. The Sulu Sultanate invasion of Sabah, the Mamasapano
massacre, the on-going shameless efforts of government to ram BBL down the
throats of an unconscious Filipino nation – if we do not bone up on the Sabah
issue we will have understood nothing at all. FINIS
[1] Privileged Speech delivered on March 30, 1963, which was broadcast over radio and television and published in The Manila Times on March 31, April 1-2, 1963. Earlier, on March 25, 1963, Senator Lorenzo Sumulong delivered a privileged speech berating the Philippines claim to North Borneo (Sabah), which had been filed by President Diosdado Macapagal on June 22, 1962. Five days later, Senator Jovito R. Salonga delivered a point-by-point rebuttal to Sumulong’s speech. The two speeches make for great reading and study even today, or especially today.
[2] [Sen. Salonga]
[3] Sen. Sumulong is Pres. BS Aquino 3rd’s maternal granduncle. In this debate Sumulong carried the British line, incredible as this may sound today.