MASJID PUTRA | Islamic laws and customs as well as other native laws and customs in Sabah and Sarawak are vested with the state governments .
The new balance of federal-state relations has allowed the BN-led states of Sabah and Sarawak to press for decentralisation of decisionmaking , increased development allocations , and a greater say in determining local issues .
Chief Minister called for oil royalties to the state to be increased to 50 per cent . There have been renewed calls to increase oil royalties to Sabah after the March 2008 election , as MPs from Sabah and Sarawak accounted for 54 of the 126 BN MPs after the election , and BN could not form the ruling coalition without the Sabah and Sarawak MPs . Sabah and Sarawak BN MPs continue to form the majority in the ruling coalition after the May 2013 general election . Recognising their new importance in the post-2008 election scenario , the Sabah and Sarawak BN have pressed their demands .
The episodes highlighted above demonstrate that federal-state relations in Malaysia is still evolving . The new balance of federal-state relations has allowed the BN-led states of Sabah and Sarawak to press for decentralisation of decision-making , increased development allocations , and a greater say in determining local issues . Overall , assigning more revenue to state governments would be appropriate for meaningful decentralisation of a federation .
References HOLZHAUSEN , W . ( 1974 ) Federal Finance in Malaysia ( Kuala Lumpur : University of Malaya Press ).
JOMO KWAME SUNDARAN AND WEE CHONG HUI . ( 2014 ) Malaysia @ 50 : Economic Development , Distribution , Disparities ( Kuala Lumpur : SIRD ) in the states that are controlled by the opposition , development funds are currently channelled through the State Development Offices , which are answerable to the Implementation Coordination Unit of the Prime Minister ’ s Department . The result is a very uneven distribution of revenue and therein financial resources between the federal and state governments .
The federal bias in the constitutional design , and the domination of a single political party at the centre ostensibly means that a centralised federation in Malaysia is inevitable . This has often led to an acrimonious relationship between federal and state governments especially when the state government is controlled by a different party . There have been , for example , several disputes over petroleum royalties over the years .
Most Malaysian oil is offshore of Terengganu , while most gas is off the shores of Sabah and Sarawak . In the 1990 election campaign , the Sabah
LOH KOK WAH , F . ( 2010 ) Restructuring Federal-State Relations in Malaysia : From Centralization to Co-operative Federalism ?, The Round Table , 99:407 , 131-140 .
LEIGH , MICHAEL BECHETT . ( 1998 ) The Rising Moon : The Political Change in Sarawak ( Sydney : University of Sydney Press )
MOHD SALLEH BIN ABBAS ( 1978 ) Federalism in Malaysia : Changes in the first twenty years , in M . Suffian , H . P . Lee and F . A . Trindade ( Eds .) The Constitution of Malaysia : Its Development 1957-1977 ( Kuala Lumpur : Oxford University Press ), pp . 163-191 .
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