Like their neighbours in Sarawak, the people of Sabah have suffered decades of neo-colonial greed and despoliation, thanks to the selfish compliance by state leaders with federal demands.Owing to a key court ruling on the eve of this state election, demanding enforcement of the 40% revenue commitment established by the Constitution, the panicked federal government has at last committed to pay back the billions of ringgit owed in purloined oil revenues and taxes.However, saying is one thing and doing is another.Sabah produces over 40% of Malaysia’s oil, which Petronas has now taken to claiming provides a paltry profit of just 10% in response to demands for healthier returns to the state. In which case, time to change the management and produce the full figures!Meanwhile, despite such alleged poor returns, massive investment has seen the political and business elite and the development of West Malaysia flourish over the past half century since Sabah’s own rebates were astonishingly frozen in 1974 – thanks to decades of compliance by state leaders (including the present governor whose family is now crowding up for positions at the state election).The modest reviews since 2022 did little to restore the deficit and federal government attempts to equate federal spending with that allocation has been rightly called out.That period is known as Sabah’s “Lost Years” during which the resource-abundant state has remained backward, impoverished and under-invested with lamentable healthcare provision and poor education facilities.The native communities have seen their once magnificent forests and rivers trashed by logging, mining, sand and rock dredging and mass plantations, all without due care to the impact on the environment, wildlife or sustainability.Flooding and shortages of basic foodstuffs and materials have been their lot – the consequence of all this resource grabbing by privileged others.Licensing the despoliation has been a state government, which has over the past few months been yet again exposed by whistleblowers and investigative reporting for presiding over the same corrupt practices of bribery and self-enrichment that Sarawak Report was writing about before voters turfed out former chief minister Musa Aman at the joint federal and state government elections of 2018.Musa and his family dominated this dark period of Sabah’s history for the longest period of any state leadership. Having enriched himself directing the Sabah forestry foundation and related bodies, he held the position of chief minister for fifteen years, whilst his brother and cousin enjoyed senior federal roles as foreign minister and attorney general.That attorney general dropped money laundering charges against Musa after his sidekick was caught shunting suitcases containing millions of dollars through Hong Kong in 2008 – on the astounding grounds that these were ‘merely’ alleged political donations.In fact, as Sarawak Report later established, they were timber kickbacks which Musa was funnelling into a multi-million dollar personal bank account in Zurich. Switzerland was forced to abandon their resulting case against Musa and UBS bank owing to years non-cooperation by the Malaysian authorities.However, when voters spoke in 2018 and kicked him out, Musa’s grip faltered. He first ran and hid in the UK, declaring himself super-sick. When he was returned, the authorities lodged no less than 46 corruption and money-laundering charges against him based on exactly the same timber licence kickbacks exposed by Sarawak Report.These were then to be spectacularly dropped in 2020, not because he was tried and found innocent but because of money politics and party frogs which enabled the overturning of the elected government through a federal backdoor coup in 2020. This would be followed by the collapse, owing to similar defections, of the Sabah state government as well.The new PN coalition attorney general simply dropped the charges against their political crony. Meanwhile, the ensuing Hajiji coalition government in Sabah proceeded to mire itself just as deeply in alleged corruption through destructive and controversial mining contracts to its political and business allies, as the shocking spate of revelations over recent months has shown.All at the expense of the people of Sabah and their priceless rainforest.Now this scandalous coalition wants the people of Sabah to vote it back into office. This, bearing in mind that not only has it collaborated with the federal authorities in letting Musa off the hook it has astonishingly rehabilitated the old crook by making him Governor of the state.That identical career path was adopted by the mega-billionaire state kleptocrat, Taib Mahmud, in Sarawak and for the same apparent reasons. The position of Governor is not only an accolade, it is known as the ultimate protection for corrupted politicians seeking the protection of immunity that is purportedly accorded to that position.Tellingly, the post-2023 federal government leadership (which ousted the 2020 coup coalition after Malaysia returned to the polls) has also endorsed the wealthy Musa, despite the anti-corruption and reformist pledges on which it was elected.No less than eight of Musa’s various offspring and relatives are now packed into the swathe of parties seeking power at this coming state election, all connected to the present governing GRS coalition backed by the self-same ‘anti-corruption’ orientated federal government.Musa’s own son Yamani Hafez Musa will stand for none other than prime minister Anwar’s PKR party in the Sipitang seat of Sindumin. Whilst his other sons and various relatives are standing for GRS.The truth, of course, is that all these parties form the same coalition cooperating at a federal level, hence the prime minister’s description of the fake battle as ‘friendly rivalry’.Should these various ‘rivalrous’ local and national parties prevail and once more form a ruling state coalition, then the same dynamic will pertain that saw the draining, despoliation and abandonment of Sabah during that previous ‘lost’ half century.Namely, there will be a state government that does the bidding of the federal government against the interests of its own people (particularly in terms of taking the profits from state oil production) in return for a free rein to corruptly issue licences for kickbacks in the state.This is what happened in Sarawak under the Taib family, in Sabah under Musa and is now reportedly going on under Musa’s current allies. Voters should at least punish those who have acted in this way to gain some controls over whoever else there is standing against this pattern of exploitation by a state leadership against its own people.To trust the same wealthy kleptocrats who blatantly condoned the illegal exploitation of Sabah’s Lost Years, as if they would not automatically return to their corrupt old ways, would be folly indeed.