Why Pulau Kukup should not go to the sultanate

QUESTION TIME | With the seemingly deliberate lack of clarity over the status of Pulau Kukup, which was gazetted as a national park and then degazetted, it is best to keep it out of the clutches of the Johor sultanate and let it be regazetted as a national park.

The straightforward reason for this is that the state royalty is far too tangled in business, many of which involve very valuable land, such as the RM4.5 billion received for the Forest City project.

Sultan Ibrahim Sultan Iskandar was also involved in a move in 2014 by the then-menteri besar to give him powers to appoint board members which will oversee all land matters in Johor, effectively giving him the power to control land matters in the state.

The latest reports, however, seem to indicate that current Menteri Besar Osman Sapian inexplicably prefers to go down the sultanate route. Pulau Kukup will be alienated to the Johor sultan, who will, in turn, ensure that the mangrove island will be maintained as a national park.

Why that roundabout route when the previous arrangement was perfectly clear and unambiguous?

In our constitutional monarchy system, whereby the sultans are titular heads, it would set a dangerous precedent to put land under sultanates via the Sultanate Amendment Act 1934, especially when no one seems to know what exactly this act says.

The issue exploded when former newsman A Kadir Jasin demanded that the menteri besar explain the controversial degazetting of Pulau Kukup as a national park or resign.

Kadir did not stop at that. "I would like to ask Osman if he was telling the truth when he told me before the start of the Bersatu supreme leadership council meeting on Nov 28 that the (Johor) palace did not interfere with the administration of the state.

"I asked him if there is truth to the rumours that the palace was taking state lands, even those measuring as little as half an acre.

"He said 'no'. But he said he wouldn't know if such a thing happened during the BN state government," he said in his blog...