KUCHING: Take the trouble to understand the reasons behind renaming the term for the state government leader. And, more importantly, respect the decision of Sarawak.
The advice comes from the Chief Minister’s chief political secretary Fazzrudin Abdul Rahman
He was reacting to the statement by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka’s (DBP) board of control chairman Prof Datuk Awang Sariyan who urged Sarawak to reconsider its decision to change the title of the state government leader from “chief minister” to “premier” as reported by Utusan Malaysia.
“While the learned professor had argued that there will be long term implications to the use of the term, I humbly urge him to respect the decision of the Sarawak Legislative Assembly (DUN) as well as the Sarawak Constitution,” said Fazzrudin in a statement on Wednesday.
“All this while, there has been no substantive differentiation between Sarawak and other states in Malaysia which is also using the “chief minister” term to name its head of government.
“The designation of premier is a similar set-up practised in other Commonwealth regions where the head of the federation is styled as the prime minister and heads of regions constituting the federation are styled as premiers.
“Consequentially, the federal constitution amendments to Article 1(2) and Article 160 (renaming state leader to Premier) reflects Sarawak’s elevated status as one of the three partners forming Malaysia and it also uplifts Sarawak’s image among the people in other states,” said Fazzrudin who is also Tupong assemblyman.
The DUN, being the supreme law -making body in Sarawak had passed The Constitution of the State of Sarawak (Amendment) Bill 2022, which had obtained the support of the members in the House.
This has allowed Sarawak to assert itself and its status as one of the partners in the formation of the Malaysia federation.
“We shouldn’t let mere technicalities in linguistic and lexicon to usurp the rights and status of Sarawak. It would be a disservice for DBP to hold such against Sarawakians,” Fazzrudin stressed.
