COMMENT An ex-Internal Security Act (ISA) detainee, Mohd Akjan Ali Muhammad, who declared himself Sultan of Sulu (and Sabah) last week is no exception.

According to one local newspaper in Kota Kinabalu, this is the third such competing claim within the last two months.

NONEThere are many such characters, all rather colourful, running amok in Sabah after having convinced themselves that they are the rightful heir to the last Sultan of Sulu.

In Akjan's (left) case, he has the dubious double distinction of being an Umno member who did a stretch behind bars for allegedly issuing MyKads to illegal immigrants.

No one knows what became of his many clients for the MyKad. Interestingly, he has been reported in the local media as saying that he has dual citizenship i.e. Malaysian and Filipino.

Before Akjan and the two other unnamed characters, there was one particular individual - claiming to be the son of a Sultan Mohammad Julaspi Ibni Almarhum Sultan Jamalul Kiram II - and thereby Sultan of Sulu and Sabah.

Like Akjan, this individual, too, held two passports, one Malaysian, the other Filipino. He allegedly had the habit of going down to the Central Market in Kota Kinabalu from time-to-time and helping himself to the cash in the tills of the traders there.

‘Sultan' milks  traders

His excuse to the gullible traders there, including the many Chinese, was that he was their "sultan" and, therefore, had a divine right to collect taxes from them.

It's a sheer wonder that the police did not nab him or bring him to court for his rather unorthodox way of collecting "taxes".

Before this particular individual disappeared from public view in recent years, he was planning to take the Sabah claim to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague in the Netherlands. This was around the time that the Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) government fell in 1994.

NONEWhen he was not flogging the Sabah claim for ICJ case, to raise money from sympathisers, the "sultan" tried to interest gullible Sabahans in his story that he knew where the late Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos had hidden his loot of gold seized from Malaya by the Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita (left), hailed as the "Tiger of Malaya".

What takes the cake is the "sultan's" claim that the gold hoard was guarded by two fierce dragons.

The "sultan" had pictures of the gold clearly stamped with the words Malaya, Sumatra or Cambodia.

There's another "sultan", also a Julaspi now deceased, who took a vow that he would not wash or bathe himself until he was installed as the Sultan of Sulu and Sabah.

Then, there's yet another "sultan" in Manila, Esmail Dalus Kiram ll, recognised by the Philippines government, for obvious reasons.

The Philippines continues to maintain the official stand that Sulu transferred its suzerainty and sovereignty over Sabah to Manila when it became part of the Republic of the Philippines.

Manila keeps alive ‘Sabah ours' stand

The fact of the matter is that the Madrid Protocol of 1885, signed by Great Britain, Spain and Germany, recognised that the Sulu Sultanate ended when the last Sultan of Sulu died without leaving a male heir.

One story being whispered in Sabah is that the sultan in fact had a male heir who was spirited away to the safety of Sabah because the father feared for the son's life.

NONEThis is the basis on which quite a number of claimants in Sabah, Sulu and Manila have come forward to claim to being the Sultan of Sulu.

There is a Jamalul Kiram ll (right) who died in 1936 claiming to be the Sultan of Sulu. After that there seems to have been a sultan called Mohamat Jamal Al Alam linked to the nine Sulu heirs.

Among others, under the Madrid Protocol, Spain relinquished any claim to Borneo. A clear line was drawn on the map to mark out the Spanish and British spheres of influence. Both Britain and Germany recognized the sovereignty of Spain over the Sulu Archipelago.

Even if there was no Madrid Protocol, one issue to consider is that the Sulu interest in Sabah was confined to collecting toll along the waterways.

Evolution of present day sultanates

The rule of Muslim sultanates in Southeast Asia has never been territorial in the western sense of the word but riverine.

The British in Malaya, for example, could never contemplate the idea of a sultan who did not have control of territory and introduced the idea of territories and borders.

In early Arab and Muslim history, the sultan had always been the democratically elected spiritual head of the local ummah (faithful), a sort of mini-Pope. Someway along the way, the sultanships became hereditary.

In Southeast Asia, Hindu rulers remained royals when they became sultans. Also, taking a leaf from Hinduism, they invoked the divine right to rule as the representative of God on Earth.

In Brunei one of the titles of the sultan is Seri Begawan - Begawan being God in Sanskrit - and hence Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital city of the oil-rich sultanate.

Notwithstanding the Madrid Protocol, the High Court of Borneo in Sandakan recognised in 1939 that nine heirs of the Sultan of Sulu had the right to share in the yearly monies, amounting to RM5,300 due from the Sabah government for the sultan giving up the right to collect toll along the waterways in the northern and eastern portions of the state.

Justice CFC Macaskie himself has been cited as saying: "Now as regards the cession - of course, the cession by Sulu refers only to parts of the East Coast you know - the question whether the cession agreement was a lease or an outright grant is really just a matter of semantics. What must decide are the wishes of the people."

Now, it's the federal government of Malaysia which makes the RM5,300 payment every year to the nine Sulu heirs without fail.

Putrajaya is reportedly willing to consider an upward revision in the annual payment and other benefits but only if the nine heirs speak with one voice.