Minister in the Prime Minister Department Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz quoted inaccurate statistics in Parliament to dismiss allegations that identification cards were given to illegal immigrants in Sabah, charged Parliamentary Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang.

In a statement today, Lim said Nazri in the winding-up on behalf of the Prime Minister's Department on Budget 2007 debate on Sept 18, prepared a five-paragraph reply to the issue which the former raised.

Nazri did not read that portion of his speech that day after opposition parliamentarians complained that he was reading his winding-up like a runaway train.

After a commotion in Parliament, which saw a brief walkout by opposition MPs, Nazri abruptly ended his speech.

However, copies of his full speech were later distributed to parliamentarians.

The speech claimed that in 1970, the Sabah population had already breached the one million mark.

To this, Lim said Nazri was attempting to rewrite history and legitimise 'Project M' - a scheme allegedly hatched by the government of then prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad to grant illegal immigrants citizenship by issuing them identification cards.

"Nazri's claims that Sabah had a population of over one million people in 1970 is most preposterous, something which he had taken from thin air, without any scientific or statistical basis.

"I would refer him to the Seventh Malaysia Plan 1996-2000, where the population for Sabah (including Labuan) for 1980 was given as 1.055 million and reaching 1.867 million in 1991 - registering the highest average annual rate of growth of 5.2 percent for any state in the decade 1981-1991," said Lim.

Crisis stricken

Lim said should Nazri be correct, new population figures need to be revised, such as previous five-year plans, mid-term reviews as well as other official publications.

Lim claimed that the rightful figure should be 648,693 in 1970, without quoting his sources. Based on figures from the Ninth Malaysia Plan, that would mean Sabah had faced a four-fold population raise by the year 2005, at 3.13 million.

"Nazri has added insult to injury and rubbed salt to wounds by showing utter contempt to legitimate grievances of Sabahans that they had been reduced to being 'refugees in their own land'," said the veteran politician.

He urged Sabah Barisan Nasional leaders to publicly debate Nazri's figures, and whether Sabahans were facing a crisis of having more illegal immigrants than legitimate locals.

'Project M' came to prominence after it was raised by former senator Dr Chong Eng Leong during his submission to the parliamentary select committee on integrity in June.

'Project M'

He claimed that the extraordinary population increase in Sabah caused by the deliberate issuance of Malaysian identity cards to foreigners under the secret 'Project Mahathir' or 'Project IC'.

As a result, there are around 1.75 million foreigners in Sabah today, including those in possession of 'Project M' identification cards as compared to 1.5 million genuine locals in Sabah.

Many of Sabah's districts have a larger population of foreigners and illegal immigrants than locals, which is said to adversely impact the socio-economic and customary rights of native Sabahans.

There have also been allegations that beneficiaries of 'Project M' have been planted into the electoral roll.

Police have begun investigations into the matter.

SPECIAL REPORT: Sabah's Project M