I would like to refer to the letter Independent Pattani not to be feared by David Tan. In his letter David Tan seemed to support the idea of an independent state of Pattani.

Does this mean that the states of Sabah and Sarawak can also claim their independence from Malaysia? This is because I see certain parallels between the case of Pattani and the states of Sabah and Sarawak.

Sabah and Sarawak formed Malaysia together with Malaya and Singapore in 1963. Sabah and Sarawak formed this political partnership with several conditions. Sarawak had an 18-point condition whereas Sabah had a 20-point condition.

Donald Stephens, the first chief minister of Sabah exclaimed that Sabah had nothing to gain from joining Malaysia. Later when Sabah was already in Malaysia, Donald Stephens said that Sabah joined Malaysia as equals, not as vassals.

However, this illusion of equality soon vanished within two years of the formation of Malaysia. When Singapore was kicked out of the Federation, the leaders of both Sabah and Sarawak were not consulted.

In 1965, Donald Stephens was forced to step down as federal minister of Sabah affairs. His Sarawakian counterpart Stephen Kalong Ningkan was forced to step down after riots in Kuching. In my view, these riots were engineered by agents of the federal government.

Therefore, it is clear here how two native leaders of Borneo were made to step down by the Malayan-controlled federal government. In 1971, the federal-backed Sabah Chief Minister Datu Mustapha Datu Harun, declared Islam as the official religion of Sabah and Malay as the official language, much to the dismay of the Kadazandusun and Murut communities.

However, what followed this was even worse. An aggressive Islamicisation policy was carried out, where native Sabahans were forced to convert to Islam. For the first time, Kadazandusuns and Muruts, who had resisted Islam for several hundred years from the time of the Sulu and Brunei sultanates, submitted.

Discrimination against native Kadazandusuns and Muruts continue up to the present. In 1994, the Kadazandusun Chief Minister Joseph Pairin Kitingan was unseated by the Barisan Nasional with money politics. Many Muslim assemblymen were offered money in return for their membership in the Barisan Nasional.

In both the 1995 and 1999 general elections, thousands of illegal immigrants, most of them Muslims from Indonesia and the Philippines, were used to help the Barisan Nasional win, again to the dismay of the Kadazandusun and Murut communities.

In the 2004 elections, with Joseph Pairin Kitingan back in the Barisan Nasional, the three Kadazandusun-Murut parties were allocated only 20 seats while the Malaya-originated Umno were given 32 seats, enough for a majority in the state assembly.

In his letter, David Tan said that the Pattani people are Malays, not Thais. The Borneo natives, namely the Dayaks, Kadazandusuns and Muruts, too, are not Malays.

The Malays are synonymous with Islam, whereas a majority of the Dayaks, Kadazandusuns and Muruts are Christians. If we were to go by David Tan's reasoning, aren't these Borneo natives entitled to an independent homeland as well?

Many of the conditions for the formation of Malaysia have been violated. Of the 20 points formulated by the founding fathers of Sabah, only two remain. The safeguards for religious freedom in Sabah have been repealed from the federal constitution.

The Borneonisation policy has never taken place in Sabah. A majority of the federal departments continue to be headed by West Malaysians.

Are these not reasons enough for Sabah to separate from Malaysia? If David Tan believes that an independent Pattani is inevitable, then I, too, see an independent Sabah and Sarawak as inevitable.

Anyway, if the likes of Donald Stephens and GS Sundang knew what Malaysia would be like today, they would never have agreed to Sabah forming the federation.