Can DAP make good its boast?

By Zainon Ahmad, The Sun

FOR a while the DAP’s battle cry in the 10th Sarawak state election seemed to be “down with BN’s two-thirds majority”, a humble enough bid considering that the four-party state ruling coalition is not about to ride into the sunset just yet.

Its national leaders from that old battle-axe Lim Kit Siang, now party adviser and parliamentary leader, his son and party secretary-general Lim Guan Eng and others have been persuading their supporters that it is do-able.

But the local young party leaders, encouraged by the huge turnout at their forums and ceramah at which more and more middle-aged and older leaders – traditional supporters of the Chinese-based Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) – are gradually attending, have excited them and fired their enthusiasm that more can be achieved.

For instance, when Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud on Saturday said that two-thirds majority is still within the Barisan Nasional’s (BN) grasp, DAP state treasurer Violet Yong and the candidate for Pending said the man her party is campaigning to oust is already on the defensive as otherwise he would say – as he had said in past elections – the BN will win all the seats.

In their ceramah and forum some of them are now saying that the enthusiastic support they are seeing everyday has moved from the level of a strong blast of the wind of change to the level of a tsunami.

Taib, their nightly punching bag now, has been made out to be the cause of all the problems that the Chinese are facing, namely land lease problems, the lack of business opportunities and corruption. Therefore he must go, said the young leaders who think that the tsunami they have started may sweep away much of the support for the BN.

Kit Siang told them not to be too over confident and to concentrate on their task to win their respective seats.

At a forum he said that it is enough just to deny the BN its two-thirds majority because it would weaken Taib’s dominance in his Parti Pesaka Bumiputra Bersatu (PBB) and he would be forced out.

To deny the BN its two-thirds will depend very much on the DAP winning most or all of the 15 constituencies it is contesting in – 14 Chinese majority seats and a Dayak seat, which the party thinks it can do.

The party’s total seats are to form the core to which its Pakatan Rakyat partners, PKR and PAS, are expected to add not more than nine from the 55 they are contesting in, with PKR taking on 49 and PAS, five.

At the height of Chinese disenchantment with the BN in 2006, especially their old protector SUPP, DAP won six of the 12 constituencies it contested in. Is the wind of change stronger now than in 2006. If it is, will it be able blow the DAP into all 15 constituencies?

Most of the Chinese majority seats are in Kuching, Sibu and Miri. There are five of them in the state capital with PKR being allocated one, Batu Lintang. Can the DAP move into the rest: Padungan, Pending, Kota Sentosa and Batu Kawah? Realistically, maybe not in Padungan and Batu Kawah.

In and around Sibu, it contested in Repok, Meradong, Bukit Assek, Dudong, Bawang Assan and Pelawan in 2006 but won only in Meradong and Bukit Assek, where state DAP leader Wong Ho Leng stood.

Wong, who is also the new MP for Sibu, won Bukit Assek for the first time in 1996 when he defeated Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Wong Soon Kai. He lost it in 2001 and won it back in 2006. Will the pendulum swing against him this time?

The DAP is fielding candidates in all the six constituencies again and hoping, after its capture of Sibu last year, it will retain Meradong and Bukit Assek and capture Repok, Dudong, and Pelawan which it lost by only 576, 408 and 263 votes respectively.

In and around Miri in 2006, it contested in Malay-Melanau majority Jepak, Pujut and Kidurong but won only in Kidurong. This time around it is contesting in Jepak, Pujut, Kidurong and another Malay-Melanau constituency of Bukit Kota, and Piasau, the home of Deputy Chief Minister and and SUPP president Tan Sri Dr George Chan.

PKR failed to prevent him from winning a seventh term in 2006 and so this time around a young DAP candidate, 46 years Chan’s junior, is trying. Piasau voters are 65% Chinese with the rest being Dayaks who have been described as his loyalists. He knows it is far from being a walkover.

It is also not going to be a walkover for DAP in Bukit Kota just as it not going to be easy for DAP candidate Leon Jimat Donald to win Simanggang, the only interior Dayak-majority constituency that the party is involved in.

Most observers think the most number of seats the challenger to SUPP’s claim to represent the Chinese of Sarawak is nine. And SUPP is fighting back.

So can the DAP make good its boast of capturing all the 15 seats?