It is no secret in Sabah that the majority of those responsible for the riots, bombings and looting on the streets of Kota Kinabalu in 1985 were not locals but foreigners.

They did not embark on their blazing trail of destruction because of rights abuses or communal causes but they were bent on bringing down a democratically elected government at the bidding of some seemingly insane Sabah politicians.

Joseph Pairin Kitingan and his month-old Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) had just won the state elections early that year, albeit with a slim majority.

Harris Salleh and his Parti Berjaya were soundly thrashed. Tun Mustapha Haruns Usno performed credibly but did not garner enough seats to form the state government.

Mustapha, at the behest and with ill advice from Harris, then staged the infamous Istana coup forcing Governor Tun Adnan Roberts to swear him in as chief minister in the wee hours of the morning. However, Mustaphas game was up within 24 hours when Kuala Lumpur stepped in.

Musa Hitam who was then acting prime minister as Dr Mahathir Mohamad was overseas, wisely and swiftly overturned Mustaphas role and declared that Pairin and the PBS had the mandate to form the new state government. Pairin was subsequently sworn in as chief minister.

Then the trouble began. For weeks, Pairin and his new administration never had any chance to get down to the affairs of running the state.

Mayhem on the streets

There was mayhem on the streets of Kota Kinabalu. Riots were occurring every day. Shops were looted. Vehicles were set ablaze. Petrol stations were bombed. Fear gripped the people of Sabah. Those few weeks in 1985 were the darkest hours in the history of Sabahs democracy.

Police reports later revealed that few locals actually took to the streets. The majority were foreigners, mostly Filipino and Indonesian immigrants.

The fact that they were coerced and paid to create the disturbances by certain enemies of the new PBS government was never denied.

Pairin knew he could not possibly govern in peace with the daily disturbances which he knew were politically motivated.

He then took a calculated risk by calling for another election to ease the political tension as well as to obtain a stronger mandate from the people.

Pairin got what he wanted. Sabahans rallied behind him and PBS and the party went on to rule the state with Pairin as chief minister for the next nine years.

In recent days, the massive clean-up of illegal immigrants in Sabah has brought up the question of political involvement (or interference) that has allowed the problem of illegal immigrants to persist for so long in the state.

Politicians from the various parties which ruled the state over the past three decades started accusing one another of turning a blind eye to the problem, thus indirectly encouraging the influx of the aliens.

But hurling accusation at one another now does not exonerate the guilty parties of their mistakes. Certain elements in each of the ruling party had at one time or another been responsible for harbouring and utilising the services of illegal immigrants for political purposes. The 1985 mayhem is a case in point.

Of all the states in Malaysia, I think Sabah has suffered the most from the problem of illegal immigrants. The state has borne many scars of those sufferings.

Foreigners everywhere

I worked in Sabah in the late eighties. During my three years in The Land Below the Wind, I think Ive met more foreigners than fellow Malaysians there.

My office was in Kampung Air in the heart of Kota Kinabalu. Each time I walked by Jalan Kampung Air, I would see cobblers or shoeshine boys plying their trade there. They were mostly Filipinos.

Across the street was a private passenger van station which Ive learnt was controlled by a group of foreigners. Needless to say, the drivers were all their fellow countrymen.

I stayed in Sinsuran, a five-minute walk from my office. At night when I looked out from my window, I could see that most of the rowdy patrons at the eateries nearby were also foreigners.

Everywhere, from the markets to the post offices and banks, foreigners seemed to outnumber locals.

Even in the Kian Kok School where I had my badminton game, two of the four courts were utilised by either Indonesians or Filipinos.

This is my experience of Kota Kinabalu in the eighties. During my last visit to Sabah in 1995, the situation was no different. Hopefully, it will improve with the latest crackdown.

In many ways, Im very happy for Sabahans that at long last the state authorities had finally sat up and viewed the situation seriously.

The all-out war against illegal immigrants and squatters in the state is long overdue. The people of Sabah have suffered enough.

Over the past two weeks, several thousand illegal Filipino immigrants had been deported from the state.

In what is believed to be the largest statewide crackdown on illegals and their squatter colonies, the state governments operation is also aimed at weeding out any armed militant groups, especially from the Philippines, which may have slipped into Sabah recently.

The police and the army have declared that they meant business this time around.

Sabah Chief Minister Chong Kah Kiat has also called on all political and community leaders to support the governments move to crack down on illegal immigrants and to resolve the long-standing problem once and for all.

Let us stop talking, stop criticising and let us work together. Its time to act, and not just talk, he declared.

Genuinely serious

Somehow, I like to believe that the Sabah government is genuinely serious this time. For too long, it has been just talking and complaining by previous state administrations.

As one who has lived in Sabah before, I can understand the magnitude of the problems created by aliens in the state. At one stage, Sabah could even be classified as a lawless country.

This is indeed a rare opportunity for the people of Sabah to join hands and cooperate to ensure that the present security operations are truly successful.

Chief Minister Chong asked to be allowed to return to Sabah to serve his home state in 1999.

He gave up his senatorship and a Federal Cabinet post. Now he is chief minister and in the best position to help his fellow Sabahans.

I do wish Chong all the best in his quest to rid Sabah of illegal immigrants. I also hope he would succeed in his campaign so that it could remain as his legacy for Sabah, even though he is only a lame-duck chief minister.

My worry is that will the campaign end when a new chief minister comes along in another year or so. Will the current political will remain? Or will the new chief minister and his party come up with a different political agenda that requires the services of illegals to see it through?

This was how illegal immigrants managed to flourish in Sabah in the past and there is no guarantee that it will not happen again.

Political leaders in Sabah must remember that the troubling circumstances demand that they demonstrate an unerring firmness, clarity of purpose and unflinching consistency in enforcing the law. The people of Sabah cannot accept anything less.

Dealing with a reported two million immigrants, legal or illegal, goes beyond partisan politics. That should be thrown out the window when the states security and sovereignty are at stake.

Take the worst scenario of an outbreak of war. Sabah will fall like a domino with two million enemies in her backyard.

Yes, that is a mind boggling thought no doubt but until last month, did anyone think that our foreign guests dared to riot, burn police cars and attack our security personnel openly?

These incidents happened in the peninsula this year. Sabah went through that harrowing experience in 1985.

Sabahs clean-up of aliens in her backyard must be an on-going exercise. It must not stop with Chong Kah Kiat.

FRANCIS SIAH is a former Sarawak newspaper editor who had worked in Sabah in the eighties. He is also the former secretary general of the State Reform Party of Sarawak (STAR)