Ghosts from the past

The Philippine claim to Sabah was the stuff of headlines in the early ’60s. Brilliant minds in the Senate, Senators Lorenzo Sumulong and Jovito Salonga, discussed the issue through well-thought out speeches.

I was a young reporter then absolutely thrilled to cover conferences and proceedings in Congress about the issue. The moving spirit behind the reconciliation of Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia was the late President Diosdado Macapagal, father of imprisoned former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

His diplomatic efforts to bring the three essentially Malay peoples paid off and thus was born Maphilindo — Malaya, Philippines and Indonesia. This later became SEATO and on to the present ASEAN.

“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, which I attended as Legal Adviser to President Macapagal.

“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,” writes Salonga.

In time, the denial of agreement by word of honor would return to haunt the peoples for whose sake the promise was made. One’s word of honor remains a binding commitment as far as Oriental culture is concerned. Promises when made through one’s word of honor, might have been supplanted by legal documents and lawyers’ briefs in the Western world but it remains deeply embedded in Oriental culture. These are not forgotten.

I venture to say that is behind the resentment of the Sultan Kiram and his heirs. Who can blame them if having been abandoned by their government, they should decide to go it alone? President Aquino calls it a “dormant” claim because no other administration after President Macapagal would bravely and openly take up the issue.

Except for President Marcos’ ill fated attempt to seize the territory by stealth and force.

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For a more comprehensive report on the Sabah claim please refer to Senator Jovito Salonga’s point by point reply to Senator Sumulong’s speech. It is now being circulated in Facebook.

“Sumulong’s statements to the press in London “were seized upon by the English press with great delight, as if to show to the Philippine panel how well-informed the Senator was,” writes Salonga.

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Here is the claim.

“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.

Here, our claim really begins. 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 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, Kina-batangan, 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.”

Overbeck later sold out all his rights under the contract to Alfred Dent, an English merchant, who 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. This Company 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. The Crown, on July 10, 1946 — just six days after Philippine independence — asserted full sovereign rights over North Borneo, as of that date.

Shortly thereafter 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.

Our 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.”