Ninoy offered to drop Sabah

The late former Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., father of former President Benigno Aquino III, had offered to drop the Philippine claim to Sabah to get Malaysian support in ousting former President Ferdinand Marcos and to put him in Marcos’ place, an official of the Sultanate of Sulu said yesterday.

The younger Aquino was also accused by the Sultanate of conniving with Malaysia and abandoning the Sabah claim that led to the Lahad Datu siege after Aquino excluded the Sulu leaders from the Bangsamoro peace agreement.

Abraham Idjirani, Sultanate of Sulu secretary general and spokesman, told the Daily Tribune that a former foreign affairs official revealed during a forum he attended at the University of the Philippines in March 2013 that Ninoy offered to work for the dropping of the Philippine claim over Sabah in exchange for Malaysian support of the move to oust Marcos.

He said Hermes Dorado, former national territory division head of the Department of Foreign Affairs, said during the forum that Aquino met with then Malaysian Prime Minister Mohammad Mahathir, who is also now the incumbent leader after a successful political comeback.

The discussion with Malaysia allegedly happened shortly before Ninoy went back to the Philippines and was assassinated on 21 August 1983, he said.

“There was a commitment to help oust Marcos and if Aquino assumes power, the claim on Sabah will be dropped,” Idjirani said.

He said, however, the alliance between Aquino and Malaysia in the effort to oust Marcos began in 1968 when Ninoy exposed the Jabidah massacre to get the attention of the Malaysian government. The senator then revealed a secret plan of Marcos to send guerrillas to Sabah.

Ninoy was already eyeing the presidency at that time. His exposé on the massacre prompted Malaysia to initiate counter actions against Marcos by agitating young Muslim activists in Manila to rebel against the government.

Among the activists at that time was Nur Misuari who, with the help of Malaysia, founded the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) which seeks to create an independent state to secede from the Philippines.

The support of Malaysia was very evident when it provided camp and sanctuary to the MNLF guerrillas who were fighting against Marcos at that time, Idjirani said.

He added the MNLF-Malaysian alliance soured when Misuari allegedly refused to sign a commitment not to include Sabah in the declaration of an independent Bangsamoro state.

Former President Corazon “Cory” Aquino made as her priority ensuring that the 1987 Constitution revised the definition of Philippine territory and deleted Sabah as part of the country based on historic claim.

Cory with her political allies allegedly tried to pass a joint resolution dropping the claim to Sabah, but it failed to secure support from members of Congress, he said.

“Malaysian hardball diplomacy and guerrilla war maneuverings, backed by shrewd use of economic leverage, sourced from huge revenues from oil extracted in Sabah, were completed by 1987,” Idjirani quoted Dorado as saying.

“They succeeded in forcing the Constitutional Commission to drop the Philippine Sabah claim, hands down,” Dorado added.

Idjiirani said the amended Baselines Law approved in March 2009 resulted in the exclusion of Sabah from the Philippine territory.

He added the amended law removed Section 2 of the 1968 law that included the phrase, “…the territory of Sabah, situated in North Borneo, over which the Republic of the Philippines has acquired dominion and sovereignty.”

“Removal of the specific reference to Sabah represented a disastrous outcome to the claims of the sultanate of Sulu,” Dorado said.

The Sultanate had lately lost the annual compensation from Malaysia of P75,000 a year after the Lahad Datu siege in 2013 which was launched to enforce the claim on Sabah after Aquino offered to abandon the claim in favor of Malaysia’s support to the Bangsamoro Basic Law.