Stephen Kalong Ningkan

Stephen Kalong Ningkan (20 August 1920 – 31 March 1997) was a Malaysian politician who served as the first Chief Minister of Sarawak and first ethnic Iban to hold this position from 1963 until his removal from office in 1966.

Early life and education Stephen Kalong Ningkan was born on 20 August 1920 in Betong, which was administered under the Second Division of Sarawak (later known as Simanggang Division). After Ningkan completed his education, he worked as a rubber fund clerk from 1938 to 1939. He resigned from his job to join the Sarawak Constabulary from 1940 to 1946. He was a police constable in the year 1942. In 1944, he joined the Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD), an underground movement based in Jesselton (present day Kota Kinabalu). He became a teacher at his former school in Betong from 1947 to 1950.

Ningkan then worked at a Shell hospital in Kuala Belait, Brunei from 1950 to 1961.

The three principal advisers for Stephen Kalong Ningkan were Ting Tung Ming, Tony Shaw, and John Pike. Ting Tung Ming was Sibu Foochow, an SCA party member, and Ningkan's political secretary. Tony Shaw was Cambridge-educated expatriate, who joined Sarawak civil service in 1948 and worked as Sarawak state secretary. John Pike was an Oxford graduate expatriate who join the Sarawak civil service since 1949 and was the former Sarawak state secretary.

Therefore, the federal government mooted an idea of opening an UMNO branch in Sarawak, trying to unite the Sarawak Malays from BARJASA and PANAS parties, initially naming it as "United Malaysian Native Organisation" (UMNO). Shortly after the formation of Malaysia in September 1963, Haji Ghazali Jawi visited Sarawak to assess the feasibility of opening an UMNO branch in Sarawak or allowing the merger of PANAS and BARJASA into a separate party that has links to the federal government. The news had led to resignations of several non-Malay members from PANAS and annoyed Ningkan because he was not consulted on such important political maneuvering in the state. In October 1964, the UMNO general assembly decided that opening an UMNO in Sarawak was not feasible because without the support of non-Muslims, the party would not matter much in the state politics. Instead, they suggested the formation of a new party through the merger of BARJASA and PANAS by 1965.

1965 land bill crisis The Brooke government introduced the land zoning system, which classified Sarawak lands into native, mixed, interior, and reserved zones. A hard limit was put on maximum amount of aggregated land, thus avoiding the problem of "exploitation of tenant by landlord". Non-natives can only acquire or develop mixed zone land, where about 1,000 square miles of land (less than 3% of the total area in Sarawak) were owned by the Chinese. Meanwhile, one-sixth of the total land area in Sarawak was under shifting cultivation. Thus, the zoning system prevents the land from being used effectively.

A Land Committee was set up by the colonial government. A report was produced in mid-1962 to "make recommendations as to the measures necessary to ensure the best use of land in the national interest."

During the administration of Ningkan, various anti-communist operations were conducted by Malaysian and British troops, and on 6 July 1965, Operation Hammer was started to resettle the Chinese living along the 10th to 25th mile along the Kuching-Serian road into a village fenced with barbed wire. A total of 50,000 Chinese were resettled. Operation Letterbox was also started to allow the Chinese in the resettled areas to fill in questionnaires providing information about the communist activities in the area. In the 1966 presidential address to the UMNO party, Tunku Abdul Rahman stated the need for the Malay language as a unifying language of the federation and asserted that "the target date to make the national language as the official language of Sarawak had been agreed upon".

Since the procedure of a vote of no confidence in the Council Negri was the only proper way of removing a chief minister from office, Ningkan refused to resign. Ningkan went to the Council Negri meeting on 14 June which was attended by 21 members. It consisted of six SNAP members, five SUPP members, three SCA members, two PANAS members, one Machinda party member, one independent member, and three ex-officio members where two of them were expatriates, which was technically a majority.

Upon his reinstatement as the chief minister, Ningkan and SUPP tried to initiate a dissolution of the Council Negri to seek a fresh mandate from the voters, but the federal government decided to impose a state of emergency in Sarawak, citing chaos in the state. This action enabled the federal government unilaterally amended the Sarawak Constitution to give the power to the state's governor to commence the Council Negri meeting.

Aftermath On 27 September 1966, Ningkan threatened to pull Sarawak out of Malaysia if certain autonomy demands such as information, broadcasting, and customs were not fulfilled by the federal government. Ningkan believed in forming the North Borneo Confederation, which consisted of Sabah, Sarawak, and Brunei. He also believed that the British, Australia, and New Zealand could be persuaded to provide military protection to independent Sarawak. An independent Sarawak could enable a closer political and economic cooperation with Singapore. Ningkan had a main support base in Second Division of Sarawak. Ningkan, claiming to control four out of five divisional councils in Sarawak, was trying persuade his supporters to declare no confidence in the new chief minister Tawi Sli.

Ningkan then decided to take the case to the Federal Court of Malaysia. He argued that the amendment to the Sarawak constitution was illegal because the state of emergency was declared in extraordinary circumstances. On 1 December 1967, Ong Hock Thye, chief judge of Malaya determined that Yang di-Pertuan Agong has the absolute power to decide on the declaration of emergency, the parliament of Malaysia has the power the amend the constitution of Sarawak based on Article 150 of the federal constitution without consulting the governor of Sarawak. Meanwhile, there is not enough evidence to suggest that the declaration of emergency was done without the consideration of the security situation in Sarawak.

Alastair Morrison, an expatriate information officer serving in Sarawak, commented that Ningkan style of politics has offended many people as other native members (bumputera) of the Sarawak Alliance felt that Ningkan was too closely linked to Chinese business interests and also had a competing interest in timber licenses.