UMNO loses its Sarawak grip

Sabah (25 seats) and Sarawak (31 seats) account for 25% of the 222 seats in the federal parliament and it is here that Pakatan must prove its mettle if it has any hope of clinching federal power at the next general election.

By Anil Netto, Asia Times Online 

It was supposed to be the highlight of Malaysian chief minister for Sarawak Taib Mahmud’s trip to the United Kingdom. But his visit to Oxford University’s Said Business School to give a special address did not go quite as planned – and underscored his and the ruling coalition’s rising troubles in a pivotal electoral swing state.

British activists caught wind of his July 26 visit and scheduled speaking engagement at the inaugural Oxford Global Business Forum and stationed themselves bearing critical placards at the venue’s entrance. In the event, Taib, who has been in power for nearly three decades, suffered the indignity of being reportedly transported in a blue, windowless van and then whisked through a kitchen to enter the venue.

The protesters mainly expressed concerns about Sarawak’s disappearing forests and the plight of the indigenous Penan and other native populations who are losing their land and livelihoods to timber firms, oil palm plantations, and hydroelectric dam projects. Those declining fortunes, they noted, were in stark contrast to the Taib family’s immense wealth.

Representatives from eight European non-governmental organizations later wrote a letter to the head of Oxford University and the leadership of the Said Business School, expressing concern about the university’s invitation. ”Most of the state of Sarawak has been absorbed into the possession of his cronies and family members through ‘privatizations’ and the handing out of palm oil and timber concessions, via arbitrary state acquisitions of native lands,” they wrote in their letter.

While Taib was away in Britain, Prime Minister Najib Razak was in Sarawak bidding to woo increasingly unhappy indigenous groups, many of whom are aggrieved over the loss of their “native customary rights” (NCR) land. A 20 million ringgit (US$6 million) initiative to survey and separate NCR land from state land would be launched by the end of the year, the premier said in an apparent bid to cool local passions. The second stage would involve granting individual land titles to the natives.

It all points to what is likely to be an intensely contested Sarawak state election, which must be held by mid-2011. It is set to shift the political battleground from the peninsula to this north Borneo state for the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN or National Front) coalition and the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Alliance) ahead of the next nationwide general election, which must be called by 2013.

The significance of Sarawak in Malaysian political calculations cannot be overestimated. It is the largest state in the 13 state federation (the second largest being contiguous Sabah), with a population of 2.5 million. Its diverse ethnic composition has been a model of multiculturalism, with Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and animism all widely practiced.

While the furor over whether Christians could use the term “Allah” in their worship and religious texts raised consternation in the peninsula, many in Sarawak and Sabah, where inter-religious marriages are common, were left wondering what the fuss was all about.

But it is the electoral significance of Sarawak that concerns both political coalitions. Of the 222 seats in the federal parliament, the BN controls 137 seats, while Pakatan has 77. The remaining eight are independents. While the two coalitions are close to electoral parity on the peninsula, the BN holds significant sway in the two north Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak.

Sabah (25 seats) and Sarawak (31 seats) account for 25% of the 222 seats in the federal parliament and it is here that Pakatan must prove its mettle if it has any hope of clinching federal power at the next general election.

For decades Sarawak has been viewed as a “BN safe deposit” in terms of delivering a significant chunk of federal parliament seats to the ruling coalition, which has ruled continuously since 1957. As an indicator of public support, in the last state-level elections in 2006 for seats in the Sarawak State Assembly, the BN won 62% of the popular vote, taking 63 of 71 state seats.

Unlike elsewhere in the federation, the dominant BN coalition party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), has not entered the fray in Sarawak. Instead. it’s been left to the Sarawak BN spearheaded by Taib’s party (the PBB) – or more accurately Taib himself – to call the shots and maintain electoral support in the state.

For as long as Taib, a Melanau-Muslim, ensured Muslim political dominance, delivered the votes and transferred some of the rights to extract the state’s natural resources to the federal government, the BN was content to let him govern the state with relative autonomy, noted analyst Faisal Hasiz in a recent commentary.

Taib has cleverly played the politics of local development – promising budgetary goodies to lure and pressurize voters at the same time. According to Faisal, “After more than three decades of politicizing development, the Sarawak BN has successfully embedded the culture of development in Sarawak society, making it almost impossible for any opposition party – which does not have access to these political ‘goods’ – to unseat the ruling coalition.”

Meanwhile, the Taib-led local administration took to its economic governance with gusto. It tapped into the state’s wealth of natural resources, including its forests, oil wealth (the state, like other oil-producing states in the federation, receives only 5% of oil royalties) and rich biodiversity. A slew of companies, some of them well connected locally, others linked to the federal government, received a host of concessions, leases for plantations, and infrastructure contracts, including for large-scale hydroelectric dams.

One of the major infrastructure companies in Sarawak is Cahya Mata Sarawak Bhd, which is mainly controlled by Taib’s immediate family. The state also has ambitious plans to build a string of dams to power the Sarawak Corridor for Renewable Energy – even though Sarawak’s present electricity demand is low.

However, this political-business arrangement received a jolt in May when a parliamentary by-election was held in the inland town of Sibu, at the confluence of the Igan and Rajang Rivers. A candidate from the opposition Democratic Action Party (DAP) representing Pakatan shocked the BN when he squeezed through with a 398-vote majority, overturning a previous BN majority of 3,235.

That was despite Najib’s active participation in the by-election campaign. The unexpected result reversed a couple of earlier by-election setbacks for the Alliance and raised hopes for a better showing in the Sarawak state election and general elections down the road.

It also suggested that Taib could increasingly become a political albatross around the BN’s neck during upcoming electoral campaigns. That perception has been compounded by a string of damaging exposes published on the website Sarawakreport.org, which appeared to be well-researched and chronicled the Taib family’s apparently extensive property holdings in Canada, the United States and UK. Taib has not publicly responded to the website’s claims.

Anil Netto is a Penang-based writer.