You would have to ask them.  But we suspect it’s because originally the Government was asleep at the wheel while the arbitration was going on, allowing its Spanish counsel to make a number of crucial errors that will end up costing dearly.  More recently, the matter seems to have become an excuse for political self-promotion.

We have little interest in explaining the strange way in which successive Malaysian governments have managed this matter.  We had a workable – if unsatisfactory – relationship with the Malaysian Government until the latter stopped paying rent for occupied land.

But it is worth considering that from 1963 onwards, the Philippine Government has repeatedly claimed that Sabah is rightfully part of the Philippines.  This is not our legal argument.  The Sultan of Sulu’s territory on Borneo was never part of the Philippines, and this was confirmed specifically in 1878 and again – when the Philippines was a US colony, in 1915.

It is regrettable that it has been a source of tension between two governments who should be on friendly terms.  We speculate that – if the Malaysian government officials thought this through at all – they may have presumed that the claim caried a risk of weakening Malaysia’s rights in favor of the Philippines.  Successive Prime Ministers (Najib and Mahathir) avoided engaging and learning about the claim, when we offered to talk directly, rather than go to arbitration.

But there is a repeated pattern of falsehoods pushed out by the Malaysian Government, to deflect from the mistakes it made in 2013.  Even recently (May 2024) the Malaysian Minister of Law is fabricating away.  In an interview with a French law journal she states that the Malaysian Government doesn’t really know who we are, and says that she thinks at least one of us is Malaysian!  Our identities are a matter of record, known to the Malaysian Government for years.  We are identified in court documents throughout the world.  None of us is Malaysian, nor ever was.  She cannot be this ignorant, so this is a bizarre lie that she feels she has to tell anyone who will listen:  Including the Malaysian people.  You need to pair this with the childish pretense that some semi-invented group who she claims are in correspondence with her, (and which usefully and implausibly told her – she says!) – that they wanted to sue Malaysia for independence in the US courts.  To be clear:  Malaysia has a constitutional history of engaging with the us since MA63.  The British and their predecessors since long before.  Here, attached, are the Malaysian bank checks that show that they know us – and paid us – by name.

The ‘spin’ that Malaysia pumps out on sovereignty, the fantasies about terrorism and our anonymity deflect public attention from the simpler reality of a lack of strategic management by a series of past governments.  But this unsatisfactory handling is a matter for the Malaysian people.  Is this farce really how you defend the integrity of Malaysia?