Don’t put Sabah claim on grocery shelf — Locsin

MANILA, Philippines — Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. has warned against selling out Sabah after describing a proposal to open a Philippine consulate general in Kota Kinabalu as “treason.”

“Let it sit but don’t put it on a grocery shelf like some people want and sell it. Over my dead body,” Locsin tweeted Sunday night after a netizen asked him what should be done with the Sabah claim.

The Borneo Post (Sabah) reported that Deputy Home Minister Datuk Mohd Azis Jamman said a senior official of the Duterte administration proposed the setting up of a consular office in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah to address the problem of undocumented Filipinos, including the issue of stateless children.

During a courtesy call last September, Secretary for Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) Datu Abul Khayr Alonto informed Sabah Chief Minister Datuk Shafie Apdal on the plan to open a Philippine consulate general office in Kota Kinabalu.

The report also said Alonto would leave it to the Foreign Ministry to convey the message that Sabah was an independent entity within Malaysia and that the Philippines should drop its claim on Sabah.

Locsin confirmed the proposal to open a consulate in Kota Kinabalu.

He warned that a consulate in Kota Kinabalu effectively recognizes Malaysian sovereignty over Sabah and “that’s treason.”

“Just keep your eyes on what Filipino officials, politicians do with our Sabah claim. That is all that counts,” Locsin said, adding he admires the late president Ferdinand Marcos despite martial law for not compromising the Philippines’ Sabah claim.

Followers of the late Sultan Jamalul Kiram III from Sulu arrived on Feb. 11, 2013 by motorboat in Sabah and entered a town in Lahad Datu that surprised the Malaysian and Philippine governments and resulted in conflict with Malaysian security forces. 

Malaysian security forces and around 200 Filipinos were locked in a standoff in the isolated coastal village. The men, led by the sultan’s brother Raja Muda Agbimuddin, pressed their ancestral claim to an area of northern Borneo that has been disputed by Malaysia and the Philippines since independence.