RP to pursue Sabah claim - Palace

Despite plans to deploy a "permanent consular team" to Sabah, the Philippines does not intend to give up its long-standing claim to the Malaysian state.

Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said yesterday President Arroyo’s request to Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad to be humane to deported Filipinos does not mean that the Philippines has dropped its claim to Sabah, which is only 18 miles from the nearest Philippine island.

"Our claim is still there," he said over the government-run Radyo ng Bayan. "But this is not being discussed for now because other more urgent matters were being attended to. But we have not dropped our claims to Sabah."

On the other hand, Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Tony Rodriguez said the Philippine claim to Sabah remains despite Mrs. Arroyo’s instructions to the Department of Foreign Affairs to set up a "permanent consular team" in the territory.

"What we’re doing is just to alleviate the conditions of Filipinos who are in Sabah and who have to be deported to the Philippines," he said.

"So we are looking at assigning a permanent component with an appropriate head to man our office in Sabah. So you can anticipate that henceforth our presence in Sabah would not be on temporary basis but on a more permanent basis," he said.

Rodriguez said 600,000 of the estimated two million population of Sabah are foreigners and that 180,000 of them are illegals, including thousands of Filipinos.

"The estimates of our embassy (in Kuala Lumpur) based on the presence of our consular team in Sabah is that there are about 4,000 Filipinos who are waiting to be deported," he said.

Rodriguez said records at the Philippine Embassy in Kuala Lumpur show that an average of 500 Filipinos have been deported from Sabah between 1990 and 1995.

"The deportation however, increased starting in 1997 and (continued until) this year," he said.

Rodriguez said Malaysia has extended from July 31 to Aug. 24 the deadline for the voluntary departure of illegal aliens.

"Fortunately, the Malaysian government has acceded to the representation of the embassy and therefore extended this to Aug. 24," he said.

"That’s why we hope to bail out all Filipinos who are deportable out of Sabah on the 24th."

Many deported Filipinos had to leave at least three dependents in Sabah, where they have lived and raised their families for a long time, Rodriguez added.

The Philippines had been claiming Sabah (then known as North Borneo) even before the Federation of Malaysia was formed in 1963.

Based on the Philippine stand, Sabah belongs to the Sultanate of Sulu which had administered the territory until the late 19th century when it was leased to a British company.

Later the British colonial government took over the territory’s administration and in 1963 it was incorporated into the newly created Federation of Malaysia without notifying the Sultanate of Sulu and the Philippine government.

By then, the Sultanate of Sulu had ceased to exist as a sovereign state and the Philippine government had already taken over its sovereign status by virtue of an agreement signed with the American colonial government at the beginning of the last century. – Marichu Villanueva