27. Supremacy of Constitution.

Any Enactment passed on or after Malaysia Day which is inconsistent with this Constitution shall, to the extent of the inconsistency, be void.

One need to be aware that any enactments made prior to Malaysia day (ie Sept 16 1963 and not Aug 31) can stand on its own even if it is inconsistent with the Constitution.

Obviously the question is whether the 20 Points Agreement (see below) is such that even the Constitution is not capable of infecting it. Remember it was this 20 points agreement that made it possible for Sabah to be created.

Now, the broader issue is the National Language where in 27/9/1973 the Sabah government enacted an National Language enactment that is contrary to one of the 20 points (ie English forever). And note that the Sabah Constitution was purposely amended to accommodate this on same day – 27 Sept 1973.

11A. Official language.

Without prejudice to clause (8) of Article 24, the official language of the State Cabinet and the Legislative Assembly shall be in Bahasa Malaysia:

Provided that –

(a) not withstanding the provisions of this Article, the English language may be used for such period and for such purposes as may for the time being be provided by or in accordance with Article 152 of the Federal Constitution; and

(b) an official English version shall be provided of anything which is required to be printed or reduced into writing and may be published in the Gazette.

AS can be seen, it is explicit that Bahasa Malaysia is the official language of the State Cabinet and the Legislative Assembly..nothing else or more (in fact at the local government level, this is not even mentioned). So how this Bahasa Melayu is now impose as an official language on Sabahan (outside of the State Cabinet and Legislative Assembly) for all purpose is a mystery to me. As far as I remember Malay is the NATIONAL language of the federation but this does not make it an OFFICIAL language. The difference between the TWO is that the later “OFFICIAL” means mandatory usage by law while “NATIONAL” means a language common or known to all.

CK