Talk:20-point agreement

Basis of article

This article is based on a common misunderstanding. The 20 Points are no form of 'Agreement' - they were the Sabah delegates' submission to the Intergovernmental Committee. The basis on which Malaysia was formed was the Federal Constitution, nothing more, nothing less. The 20-Points have undoubtedly become important as a rallying point for disgruntled Sabahan, but they have no legal force whatsoever, and never did. Monsopiad 13:26, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Maybe we can change certain words in the article, ie: "is an agreement" to "is a submission". but do you have source for this? why does newspaper articles eg: daily express quote the 20-point agreement as if it has some sort of legal effect? kawaputra^tok2me 04:48, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Kawaputra, may I asked is the binding agreement the Malaysia Agreement that was signed in 1963? Because if it is then it is available via SAPP website here. http://www.sapp.org.my/pdf/msia_agreement_1963.pdf. If this were binding, I am also surprised that there are nothing on in wikipedia --Danazach (talk) 13:04, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks - that is the binding agreement, yes. We already have a link to that on this article page, the Malaysia page, and several others. Some links point to the document in the UN treaty store, some to the text at wikisource, so that's actually pretty well referenced in several places already. What we really need is a reliable source for the text of the 20 point memorandum/agreement itself, which is a different document, which we believe was part of the negotiation, though not the final agreement - see discussion in next section.  Begoon•talk 13:09, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Source

There is no source in the article for the 20 points. I have searched, and cannot find one. The text of this page is generally used for all online discussions I could find. It concerns me that Wikipedia is in danger of becoming a de facto source on this subject, and thus an obvious target for POV edits. It would be great if someone could find a reliable source for the text.

I also agree with the comment in the previous section that it appears this memorandum was not incorporated into the constitution, and as such has no actual legal standing - but more details on that would be useful too, in order to add some perspective to the article. Obviously there is a school of thought which feels "short-changed" by events, but I think we need more clarity, so that we can present all the facts in the article.

I'm sure the text here is probably fairly close to the official memorandum, but since it is regularly edited, we really need an official, reliable source to back up our content here.  Begoon•talk 17:12, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I too can't find any online source for this 20points agreement. However, i have a book which have included the 20points in the appendix. If u think this is a sufficient (and temporary) source, i will add it to the article. The book details can be found here [1] and here [2]. ќמшמφטтгמ^torque 00:34, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

That would certainly be better than no source at all - thank you. Will you be able to check that the content we have here matches that source when you add it? At least that way we will have some sort of verified text to work with.  Begoon•talk 02:33, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

I have taken a photo of the 20-point Agreement from the Sabah Museum a while back, but since I was using my camera phone then, the quality isn't that good (plus there's a rule against taking photos in museums). The 20-point Agreement was in Bahasa Malaysia and at first I thought of uploading it on Wikisource, except that we don't have one in Bahasa Malaysia yet.

I wished someone could step up and start a Wikisource in Bahasa Malaysia. I bet there's so many stuff waiting to be uploaded, including the Federal Constitution (in BM). CoolCityCat (talk) 01:41, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

OK, i will get that book and check the contents before i insert the source to this article. ќמшמφטтгמ^torque 02:40, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks very much. I appreciate the effort you're going to here. If there was a way I could help, I would, but I've still been unable to find any reliable source myself. As I said above, everything I find online seems to use this article as its source, and that's why I think it's even more important that this article is itself reliable.  Begoon•talk 03:18, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi Begoon, after reading some books in google book (btw people with access on the actual book might want to read up on that because google book only provide review on some pages, depending on luck - particularly Malaysia By A. J. Stockwell, University of London. Institute of Commonwealth Studies and it really shows a lot of detail), I found some history on cobbold commission and 20th agreement, which might be a section in this wikipedia article

Chronologically:

21 Mar 1962: Cabinet Greater Malaysia Committee Meeting - committee agree that it's best to wait for Cobbold report for decision on Federation of Malayia (i.e. on Borneans opinion on the merger of Malaysia)

21 June 1962: Cobbold Report completed. Report signed by all commissioners and submitted to prime minister of Britain and Malaya (confidentially). Report informed that 1/3 fully support the idea, 1/3 in favour provided that it comes with safeguard, 1/3 divided between those who would want North Borneo and Sarawak to first gain independence prior to merger and those who reject outright.

Commissions view - firm supporter of Malaysia (transfer of sovereignity withing twelve months), however with transitional arrangement (British remain for first few years).

31 July 1962: British and Malayan Goverment have decided in principle that the proposed Federation of Malaysia shall be brought into being by 31st August 1963. An Inter-Governmental Committee (IGC) to be formed to work out on future constitutional arrangement. .

Aug 1962: Report published to all. Came as a great shock to North Borneo

13-14 Aug 1962: Donald Stephens convened a meeting of political leaders who drew up 14 point (later 20 point) of minimum demand. Gained support by Sarawak..

12 Sept & 26 Sept 1962 respectively: North Borneo and Sarawak legislative council agree to Malaysia on condition that state rights were safeguard.

I'm guessing the IGC took this into account in constructing the Malaysian agreement, however on the exact wordings that was drawn up in Donald Stephen's meeting, unfortunately it was not in the google book (cross finger it's in the actual book), but as what Kawaputra had informed, it is available in Sabah museum.

--Danazach (talk) 12:04, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much. If you can link the Google Books pages you got that information from, to use as a citation, I'll edit it together into a Timeline section for the article. It'll be nice to at least have something sourced in the article. :)  Begoon•talk 13:43, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I need to come back to you on that in a bit because I seemed to have lost the free view access (i'm not sure whether this is a feature in google book). Once I have found t again I will provide the referencing immediately. Danazach (talk) 08:29, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Hurray, I finally found the google book. The other events are more related to cobbold's commission, I'm not sure whether it needs to be included. nevertheless all the events are cited frm the same book. Danazach (talk) 18:30, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you.  Done - copy edited and added to article  Begoon•talk 05:05, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Reference

Currently the reference is rather messy because I have to quote for every perkara there is. I would like to use the common usage 'ibid' as is normally used in normal books, but for Wikipedia with the ever changing edits, is there an auto 'ibid' that maintains its relation with its previous sequencing? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Danazach (talk • contribs) 08:27, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I've not seen one, but I haven't done a great deal of book citing, personally, usually web citations are what I prefer. Obviously that's not much use here - but I wonder if this might help: Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Shortened_footnotes - seems like that would allow referencing the book once, then short refs for individual cites. Not really what you're asking, but all I can see at first glance. Maybe someone knows a better way...  Begoon•talk 08:53, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Incidentally, the Google Books references you added bring up a message - "not available, or you have exceeded your limit" message for page 252, but I can access points 7 to 20 from p.253 onwards, so that's excellent. Maybe just one reference for the section would be enough - one can scroll from p253 to p254 anyway?  Begoon•talk 09:05, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I cleaned up the mess for you. Maybe you should read up on how to cite first :-). CoolCityCat (talk) 10:26, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

...and, possibly, just possibly, there was a better way of phrasing that whilst we waited for the editor who had spent considerable time digging up citations that have been missing from this article for years to come back and read the suggestions. I'm grateful for his efforts. That's presuming your comment was aimed at him. If, instead, it was aimed at me, then this response should only have consisted of a couple of very much shorter words.  Begoon•talk 10:37, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh, my apologies if there ever was a misunderstanding. Maybe I should say to whom I'm supposed to reply to next time. BTW, the manual of style of a talk page is to make an extra indentation whenever a reply is made, regardless of to whom the reply is made.

I also applaud the effort Danazach has made to improve the article. I'll just come around here once in a while to wikify or copyedit or whatever is necessary. It's already in my watchlist anyways.

And so, Begoon and others fighting to uphold the 20-points, Happy Malaysia Day! CoolCityCat (talk) 10:55, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Happy Malaysia Day indeed, to you, too. If you were, as you imply, following WP:INDENT, then logically your reply was to me. Which is odd, because I don't recall making "a mess". Regardless, have a nice day.  Begoon•talk 11:09, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Dead link

During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!

• http://www.digitalibrary.my/dmdocuments/malaysiakini/767_Report%20of%20the%20Commission%20of%20EnquiryNorth%20Borneo%20&%20Sarawak%20&%20IGC%201962.pdf
  • In 20-point agreement (Sabah) on 2011-05-25 06:57:38, Socket Error: 'A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond'
  • In 20-point agreement (Sabah) on 2011-06-10 04:55:37, Socket Error: 'A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond'

--JeffGBot (talk) 04:55, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved to 20-point agreement. Favonian (talk) 18:41, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

---

20-point agreement (Sabah) → 20-point agreement – Since there is no other 20-point agreement on Wikipedia, the parenthetical disambiguation is unnecessary. Also consider "Twenty-point agreement"; I don't know whether numerals or letters are preferred for numbers in titles. 155.33.149.25 (talk) 15:30, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

• Support Good call by the IP. It seems to me that the numeral is more common than the spelt out word, but I don't know about guidelines on this either. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 15:40, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
• Support. Superfluous disambiguation. No comment on whether it should be "20" or "Twenty", though. Jenks24 (talk) 21:15, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Infobox issue

I am quite sure that the Malaysia Agreement and the 20-point agreement are 2 different things. The infobox in this article contains info about the former which already has a separate article. The two agreements might be related in some way - im not sure. But i think we should remove the current contents of the infobox as it is misleading and replace it with the 20-pt agreement, if we can find any source. ќמшמφטтгמ^torque 08:28, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you that Malaysia Agreement and the 20 point memorandum are two different things, and hence it should be removed from the article..However I cannot find a copy of the official memorandum signed by 3 representatives of each of 5 parties involved, only information regarding it from sources in google book. I recall someone wanted to snap a picture of the agreement from Sabah Museum, but I'm not sure on the update of that. --Danazach (talk) 12:28, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm removing the infobox. As you correctly point out, it is misleading. Infoboxes are a convenience to display information, and if we don't have enough information to use one, then the solution is simple. We don't use one. This one is frankly bizarre, and very likely to mislead. Begoon ^talk 09:14, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Urgh. Thanks Begoon, and good spot Kawaputra. Lots of issues in this area, any cleanup is good. CMD (talk) 15:30, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

WP:COATRACK

This article has become a WP:COATRACK.

I propose to restore the version of the brief timeline from here: [3].

If that's too radical, can anyone suggest a better way to remove all of the unrelated details about other treaties, later agreements and tangentially-maybe related issues which have developed?

I'm serious - it's a mess. Begoon ^talk 05:16, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, User:Omdo has a penchant for adding less relevant or irrelevant information on wikipedia articles, and I've given up restoring to the more succinct version of this article. But I agree with restoring it to the aforementioned version.--Danazach (talk) 09:31, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Well it'd be a shame, in my opinion, to leave it in this state after Kawaputra and yourself put in all that effort finding sources. As it stood after that I think it was a nice, succinct article, explaining what this 20-point agreement was. And, really, that's all it needs to be. It's now the type of article I'd tend to take one look at, and go away not much the wiser, or more confused than when I arrived. I'm not saying the short version couldn't be improved, but I am saying it's now such a mess we "can't start from here"... I really vote for a bit of WP:DYNAMITE - but not full demolition, because we have a reasonable version to restore. Begoon ^talk 10:15, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Dynamite isn't an unreasonable idea. A brief timeline should be brief after all. Best thing would be to dynamite and then see if any of the removed sources have anything to add. CMD (talk) 10:21, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Ok - well, unless anyone objects in the meantime, I'll plan to do that tomorrow, then. Thanks, guys. Begoon ^talk 11:31, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

 Done to the best of my ability. Most of the additions were related to either other agreements, countries not involved, tangential discussion etc. If I nuked anything that I shouldn't have, and which actually belonged in a "brief timeline of events" for the 20-point agreement, sorry, and feel free just to reinsert whatever it was. Thanks. Begoon ^talk 02:59, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

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