Compared to previous royal commission of inquiry (RCI) reports, the report on the RCI on immigrants in Sabah is notably thin and has no appendices, DAP Gelang Patah MP Lim Kit Siang said.

At 376 pages, the Sabah report released last week is less than 10 percent report of the RCI on the Lingam video tape scandal on the integrity of the judiciary which was more than 2,300 pages.

The Sabah report also did not include exhibits, statutory declarations and testimonies, different to the Lingam RCI which had to be published in four volumes to include such material.

"I call on Najib to immediately release the missing pages. The (Sabah RCI report) should be thickest and most voluminous of all RCI reports in the nation’s history but it is only 367 pages," he said.

In fact, he said, this should be the first task of Deputy Chief Minister Joseph Pairin Kitingan (right) who is chairing the working committee on immigrants in Sabah.

Lim said this in his speech at a forum on the RCI report in Kota Kinabalu last night, circulated to media later this afternoon.

According to Lim, the appendices should exceed 5,000 pages but are not made public.

This includes the 361 memorandums, 177 exhibits and testimonies of 211 witnesses in its public hearings from Jan to September 2013.

"Is Pairin prepared to take a stand that the full report of over 5,000 pages… should be immediately made public?" he asked.

'Najib should've been there'

He also questioned why the word ‘royal’ was dropped from the cover of the RCI report, and no preface by chairperson Steven Shim as per previous RCI reports.

The prime minister should have also launched the report himself, and not the chief secretary, given the gravity of the problem which has plagued Sabah for the past forty years, he said.

Instead, he said, chief secretary Ali Hamsa and attorney-general Abdul Gani Patail had “clouded the occasion” by giving “misleading accounts” of the problem.

To a question at the launch, Ali had said that the illegal mass issuance of identity cards – ‘Project IC’ was financially-motivated and not politically-motivated.

Gani also told media that there is negligible impact on past election results as those who obtained ICs illegally and are registered as voters have been removed from the electoral roll.

“(This is) baseless and untrue,” Lim said.

He also refuted commissioner Kamarulzaman Ambon who told The Star that the commission could not make a stronger conclusion on ‘Project IC’ as there was no “smoking gun”.

“But going through the (Sabah RCI report), I find many smoking guns.

“It is most shocking that the Commissioners cannot see these “smoking guns” and have gravely failed Sabahans.  

“This is why Sabahans find the (Sabah RCI) report completely unsatisfactory,” Lim (right) said.

In the report, the commissioners said the testimonies implicating politicians in Project IC is not conclusive as the witnesses were never cross-examined.

The witnesses, former Internal Security Act detainees who were nabbed for issuing IC’s illegally, said they did so to affect the electoral roll.

Related stories

Sabah criminal activities 'like a time-bomb'

'Using Sabah RCI to rile up folk an old tactic'