Talk:North Borneo Federation

Improvement drive

Brunei is currently nominated on Wikipedia: This week's improvement drive. Come and support it with your vote! --Fenice 18:08, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

In what year was North Borneo Federation plan discussed? Is it still ongoing?

Article improved

The article originally claimed that most oil revenues goes to Kuala Lumpur which is not true, it goes to the federal government. Since this becomes a part of the federal government budget, I don't think you can make any comment about where it is spent. A better claim would be that the federal government doesn't spend enough on Sabah despite getting a sizeable chunk of their budget from oil revenues from Sabah but IMHO this is unnecessary.

Another claim was that the failure of Brunei joining the federation was because of poor diplomacy by the part of Malaysia. My Malaysian history is rather hazy but the Malaysia article mentions that there were disputes of oil revenues which I recall as being a factor. The history article also mentions the opposition of the Brunei people in the referendum (which I guess was partially related to the issues of oil revenues etc) and the revolt as other factors. I also vaguely recall that the Sultan of Brunei may have wanted to be permanent agong (king). In any case, it seems clear that there were many factors and disputes preventing Brunei joining the federation. Malaysian diplomacy may have played a part in all of these but it seems more likely that the biggest problems was the disagreement between the Malaysian (especially the Malayan) side and the Brunei sides about the nature of the federation (and it's government and powers) and the sharing of state resources and revenues from state resources which probably couldn't have been resolved no matter how good your diplomacy was. Nil Einne 15:32, 24 March 2006 (UTC)