There’s no official, contemporaneous record of why the annual payments – a few thousand ringgit – stopped, or even of a considered decision to do so.  We were never told that they had stopped, let alone why.  We have never found a clear answer.  The timing with Lahad Datu, however, is hard to ignore.

After the arbitration, it became clear from comments that then-Prime Minister Najib had unilaterally stopped the payments, even though Attorney General Tommy Thomas, in his autobiography, made clear that this had been a breach of contract because we had nothing to do with the attacks on Lahad Datu.  It was an expensive mistake by the Malaysian Government, putting itself in breach of the contract that gave it the authority over –  and the wealth of – an entire state.  Amid all the trumpeting from Sabah politicians, they miss three important points.

• It was never our intention to ‘take back’ Sabah. Just to enforce and renegotiate a contract, leaving Sabah under the control of the Malaysian Government once more.
• It was the Federal Government that always paid the lease, and it was the Federal Government that stopped paying, in what has to be one of its maddest decisions.
• Our dispute is with the leaseholder, the Federal Government. Not with the State Government of Sabah.

But with all the noise coming from The Law Minister, it is striking that she has never publicly addressed herself to why the UMNO government put Malaysia in this precarious position.