Out of sight for decades, Sabah is out of Filipinos’ minds

Is it a banana? No. It’s an island claimed by both Malaysia and the Philippines, silly.

In the early 1960s, when the Philippine claim to the disputed territory of Sabah was resurrected by Congress, the issue was so publicly debated that it became the subject of questions for hapless women vying for titles in beauty contests and for examinees taking the Bar.

Despite the heated legislative debates on the Sabah claim at that time, the claim may have passed rest of the country by. In fact, an unnamed beauty contestant lost her chance at the crown and several Bar examinees flunked because of it.

In an interview with Cagayan de Oro Rep. Constantino Jaraula, the legislator said a very beautiful contestant in a national beauty contest in the early 1960s was asked by the board of judges if she knew about Sabah.

Jaraula said the beauty contestant "proudly answered: ‘Ah, saba is a very good kind of banana that Filipinos love to eat.’ Of course, she lost in that contest."

In the Bar examinations during the same year the unfortunate beauty title aspirant lost because of Sabah, the disputed territory became the downfall of several Bar examinees.

The late Vicente Sinco, then the Bar examiner for political and international law asked how "dominium (proprietary right) and imperium (sovereign right)" would be applied in the case of the Philippine claim over Sabah.

Jaraula said many of the flunked examinees burned their law textbooks after the Bar exams in a bonfire at the University of the East campus, where the month-long examinations were held. The examinees said the Sabah claim was not found in any of their textbooks.

"They flunked that exam because they miserably missed the point of the question, which was the application of the principle of dominium and imperium as applied to the Philippine claim to Sabah," Jaraula said.

The correct answer to the question, Jaraula said, is that the sovereign and proprietary rights of the Sultan of Sulu over Sabah were acknowledged by the colonial European powers, including Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain.

"This was manifested in numerous agreements when (these) countries had conflicting claims over the Sulu archipelago and its dependencies. They ended in a compromise where they recognized the Sultanate of Sulu over North Borneo (Sabah)," Jaraula said.