The Beginning of Change in Sarawak
By Kee Thuan Chye, The Malaysian Insider
THERE was no tsunami in Sarawak. Barisan Nasional (BN) is still firmly rooted after winning 55 seats out of the 71 in the state elections last Saturday.
It lost seven from its haul of 62 in 2006, but that’s only an 11 percent drop. Parti Pesaka Bumiputera (PBB), helmed by Taib Mahmud, who continues to be Chief Minister after a 30-year reign, won all the seats it contested. The main BN casualty is the Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP), whose president, George Chan, also lost his seat and thereby his position as Sarawak’s Deputy Chief Minister.
Predominantly Chinese, the SUPP lost its hold on the urban areas, conceding further to the Democratic Action Party (DAP), which doubled its seats from six in 2006 to 12 this time. This clearly indicates that when the Chinese are discontented, they will stop voting for BN, even for the Chinese-based parties within the coalition. It happened in the general election of 2008 with the Peninsular Malaysia Chinese; now it’s happening with the Sarawak Chinese.
They’ve realized – at last – that it’s useless to vote for any Chinese party that is within BN, because it will have little power to stand up for the community. In Peninsular Malaysia, the MCA is eclipsed by Umno, and in Sarawak, the SUPP has been a ‘yes-party’ to Taib and PBB.
The MCA should take note of the Sarawak election outcome. It’s bewildering that the party seems to think it can recapture its former glory by remaining in BN, despite being publicly insulted left, right and center by Umno leaders. Nazri recently called the MCA “the neglected wife” who “keeps complaining to outsiders that she has been detained, sexually abused and denied food by her husband, but she refuses to divorce”, and yet the party is shamelessly clinging on.
Interestingly, before the Sarawak elections, MCA Deputy President Liow Tiong Lai said the SUPP’s performance would be a barometer of how the MCA would perform at the next general election. Well, now that the barometer indications have turned out negative, what will the MCA do?
Many Opposition supporters are disappointed with the election results – not only did the tsunami not happen, but BN’s two-thirds majority remains intact. Prior to polling, expectations had been raised that a big change was coming, especially in view of the mammoth turnouts at Opposition ceramahs in urban centers and the dissatisfaction expressed by Sarawakians themselves with the overstaying Taib. But the outcome is not commensurate with the expectations.
Some are asking: If the Sarawakians wanted Taib to go, why did they continue to vote for his party?
The answer probably lies in the physical vastness of Sarawak and the lack of communication access between the rural interior and what we would call “the outside world”. If in the last 30 years, the ruling regime has done little to improve connectivity between the two realms, it could be that such a situation actually works in its favor. Those in the interior are not brought up to speed on political goings-on and so have little interest in politics. They are not provided with amenities like electricity that will give them access to television. Well, even if they had that, the TV channels churn out government propaganda, anyway.
Their concern is with their daily lives and struggles. So when election time comes around, they are not tuned in to the issues of Sarawak, let alone national ones. The ruling regime keeps them where they are so that their votes are ensured. At election time, goodies, including those in the form of money, are dispensed. It has become the norm. Non-partisan observers on the ground reported: “In rural areas, whoever spends more, wins. It’s amazing not a few people in such areas seem to expect something in return for their vote.” This corroborates what the Opposition reportedly alleged – that BN agents gave cash handouts to voters, ranging from RM100 to RM2,000 per voter.
Opposition supporters are disappointed that Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) managed to win only three seats when there was so much hoopla before polling that it would do much better from the 49 it was contesting. That’s a success rate of only 6 percent. But if they were to view it from another angle – that PKR is relatively new to Sarawak, that it had won only one seat in 2006 and now has three, which is a 200 percent increase, there is some cause for hope. Add to that other factors like limited funds, difficulty of penetrating the rural areas, lack of mainstream media coverage, attempts by the police to break up its ceramahs, and the fact that PKR still managed to garner 17 percent of the popular vote, and the hope for future expansion appears brighter.
The 17 percent translates into 117,100 ayes, which when compared to PBB’s 192,785 (28.7 percent) sounds pretty encouraging. PKR was not a washout, unlike the Sarawak National Party (SNAP), which got a paltry total of 15,663 votes (2.33 percent).
The party should take heart from the elections and be inspired to rejuvenate itself. It should now stop its party infighting and squabbling, and reorganize to become a credible force for the general election. It should work even harder to establish itself in Sarawak – with Baru Bian, who wrested the Ba’Kelalan seat from BN, spearheading the enterprise. The current political scenario being what it is, PKR should touch base with longhouses that had been instructed not to let the Opposition visit, and try to cultivate their support.
Pakatan Rakyat as a whole – even though the DAP, PKR and PAS have local branches and their candidates are Sarawakian – might consider finding Sarawak parties to ally with as these will be better received by voters who are suspicious of parties that originated in Semenanjung. Indeed, many may have voted for Taib’s party this time round for fear that if it lost or won poorly, Umno would seize the chance to rush in. Like it did in Sabah.
Meanwhile, what will Prime Minister Najib Razak honestly make of the Sarawak election results? He had hoped that BN would win big to keep up its momentum of winning the last few by-elections, motivating him to turun padang together with his deputy, Muhyiddin Yassin, and spend six days canvassing for votes throughout the state, reportedly spending RM500 million. But has the result of his efforts been satisfying? Did he manage to ensure that Sarawak is still BN’s safe deposit?
Well, he cannot be sure of the Chinese support now. And George Chan’s post-election comments are rather damning of his own coalition. He blamed the state and federal governments for not listening to the people and for doing “too little too late” to correct “unfair and unjust policies”, and warned that BN cannot presume that Sarawakians would continue to support it. Coming from such a senior party leader, this is revealing.
The support of the rural populace will still be substantial, but will this be enough for Najib to call for a general election soon? The way it looks, the BN momentum seems to have been stalled. On top of that, Taib will still be a liability to BN unless he steps down, but he has brazenly announced that he will stay on for another two to three years. What will Najib do next to pacify voters regarding Taib? How indeed will he handle Taib himself? For starters, expect more money and development to be pumped in soon.
