GMA reconvenes Sabah claim body

President Arroyo reconstituted yesterday the nine-year-old Executive-Legislative Advisory Council on Sabah to take up the Philippine claim to that Malaysian-held territory.

After a five-hour meeting with leaders of Congress at Malacañang, Mrs. Arroyo signed an executive order to reconvene the body, which President Fidel Ramos set up in 1993.

Mrs. Arroyo told congressional leaders her administration would act to resolve the problem of the deportation of thousands of Filipinos from Sabah.

The President said she would chair the council, which would consist of five Cabinet members, five senators, five congressmen, one opposition member each from the Senate and House of Representatives, and three representatives from the private sector.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople said the Philippine claim to Sabah will not be renounced.

Ople said reviving the Sabah claim is "superfluous… because there is nothing to revive… It’s merely kept within the strong and responsible framework of an advisory council of the Pre-sident which, however, was never recalled after it was created."

On the other hand, Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said Mrs. Arroyo reconvened the council to discuss the Sabah claim and not to retaliate against the Malaysians.

"The President thought it would be the most prudent thing to have a unified stand on the matter and to have a unified stand on the matter, it’s best to consult with other sectors with representatives from both chambers of Congress and it will also have representatives from private sector in that council," he said.

Bunye said the council’s reconstitution is not inconsistent with the previous declaration of Mrs. Arroyo that the problem of Filipino deportees from Sabah should be "delinked" from the Philippine claim.

"While even the council is being constituted, the Sabah issue remains low priority, the top priority of course is addressing the condition of our repatriates," he said.

It is not yet clear if Mrs. Arroyo would name representatives of the heirs of the Sultan of Sulu to the council, Bunye added.

Ople said the government will undertake consular services for some 120,000 Filipinos in Sabah to speed up the processing of their travel documents and passports.

"The Philippine government would take advantage of the window of opportunity provided by the temporary moratorium on arrest and detention of illegal aliens in Sabah as promised to President Arroyo by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad during their telephone talks last week," he said.

Ople said he has been informed that the Malaysian government is "open to the claims" of the heirs of the 19th-century Sultan of Sulu who leased Sabah to a British company.

"On the political side, the (Malaysians) say that there is no claim but they are willing to discuss it," he said. "But on the matter of private claims, they have always been open to that."

Ople said during the Ramos administration, Negros Occidental Rep. Apolinario Lozada Jr. invited the heirs of the Sultan of Sulu to Metro Manila and more than 1,000 people arrived at the Philippine Village Hotel in Pasay City.

"That is one of the real problems," he said. "Malaysia says ‘Can you name a single spokesman or interlocutor and we will talk to him on the private claims..’"

The number of heirs of the Sultan of Sulu has "proliferated" since 1963 when Mrs. Arroyo’s late father, President Diosdado Macapagal, filed the claim following the establishment of the Federation of Malaysia, Ople added.

Lozada, chairman of the House committee on foreign relations, said he was happy that Mrs. Arroyo heeded his recommendation to reconstitute the council, of which he was an original member.

"And with the reconstitution of that council, I can assure the public, especially our countrymen that the council would be the vehicle for us to discuss and propose the necessary policy actions to be taken by the government with regards to our problems on Sabah, not only repatriation, not only border crossing but as well as the most important thing there is the Philippine claim on the state of Sabah," he said.

Lozada was present at the meeting between Mrs. Arroyo and the leaders of Congress. – With Mike Frialde, Romel Bagares, Roel Pareño