government submitted a 20-point agreement to the Malayan government as conditions before North Borneo would join the federation. Subsequently, North Borneo legislative assembly agreed on the formation of Malaysia on the conditions that North Borneo's rights would be safeguarded. North Borneo then entered Malaysia as an autonomous state with autonomous laws in immigration control and Native Customary Rights (NCR), and the territory name was changed to "Sabah". However, under the administration of the United Sabah National Organisation (USNO) led by Mustapha Harun, this autonomy has been gradually eroded with federal government influence and hegemony with a popular belief amongst Sabahans that both USNO and UMNO have been working together in permitting illegal immigrants from the southern Philippines and Indonesia to stay in the state and become citizens to vote for Muslim parties. This was continued under the Sabah People's United Front (BERJAYA) administration led by Harris Salleh with a total of 73,000 Filipino refugees from the southern Philippines were registered. In addition, the cession of Labuan island to federal government by the Sabah state government under BERJAYA rule and unequal sharing and exploitation of Sabah's resources of petroleum have become grievances often raised by Sabahans, which has resulted in strong anti-federal sentiments and even occasional call for secession from the federation amongst the people of Sabah. Those who spread secession agenda often landed in law enforcement hand due to the controversial ISA act, such as 1991 Sabah political arrests. Until the 2008 Malaysian general election, Sabah along with the states of Kelantan and Terengganu, were the only three states in Malaysia that had ever been ruled by opposition parties not part of the ruling BN coalition. Under Joseph Pairin Kitingan, PBS formed the state government after winning the 1985 state election and ruled Sabah until 1994. In the 1994 state election, despite PBS winning the elections, subsequent cross-overs of PBS assembly members to the BN component party resulted in BN having the majority of seats and hence took over the helm of the state government. A unique feature of Sabah politics was a policy initiated by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in 1994 whereby the chief minister's post is rotated among the coalition parties every two years regardless of the party in power at the time, thus theoretically giving an equal amount of time for each major ethnic group to rule the state. However, in practice, this system was problematic as