Malaysia on Wednesday rejected a proposal by Mr Aquilino Pimentel Jr, a member of a Filipino government committee to amend the Philippine Constitution to include Sabah as the “13th federal state” of the Philippines. President Rodrigo Duterte appointed the committee to review the 1987 Constitution. According to Pimentel, the inclusion of Sabah in the Philippine territory was part of the country’s shift to a federal system of government. The switch was one of the key planks of Duterte’s election campaign. The country currently employs a unitary form of government with much of the power emerging from the central government. When he was still running for President, Duterte vowed to pursue the Philippines’s claim to Sabah and said that the Philippines have to stake their claim.