Ally turned rival
Sin Chew Daily
Sarawak state election is officially kicked off but the “civil war” within Pakatan Harapan has frustrated many a supporter.
Right from the very beginning the contest is a very tough fight for Pakatan and there is practically no hope for them to wrestle the state administration from the BN, while denying BN of two thirds majority in state assembly is an equally uphill task.
Under such circumstances, the rivalry between the two major components of the opposition pact only serves to further impact the prognosis.
Prior to the nomination, both BN and Pakatan were equally sunk in a dilemma over seat allocation. The internal split within SPDP and SUPP gave rise to the pro-BN Teras and UPP, and to solve the problem, CM Adenan has named 13 BN direct candidates in a bid to hold the state coalition in one piece.
Compared to the state BN, the division within the opposition pact appears to be even wider, with DAP clashing with PKR in six constituencies. This is poised to further dampen the morale while diluting the votes for the opposition.
DAP’s parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang has extended a public apology to the people of Sarawak while jailed PKR advisor Anwar Ibrahim expresses his regrets. Although the supporters of Pakatan have pinned their hopes on the two parties mending the fences to avoid heads-on clashes, given the fact that this entails a melange of complicated factors and political interests, it is not easy to close the gap.
Unlike BN, the positions of individual components within Pakatan Harapan are more equal without one particular party dominating over the rest. The advantage of such a situation allows for more space for negotiation but on the down side, friction may arise much more easily and consensus is harder to achieve among the component parties.
The raison d’être of any political party is to grab the political power and clinch the right to form a government. As a result, it is understandable that political parties will do their best to expand their individual influences and struggle to command the most favorable positions for themselves. Without the constraint from the most dominant component, a rift can be created much more easily in Pakatan, as no one has a bigger say than the other.
DAP and PKR are both allies and rivals, fighting for the limited political resources available, especially in some grey areas where both sides strive to establish some basis of rationality to get their respective candidates fielded.
In Peninsular Malaysia, both parties have through years of hard work formed their own political domains with little dispute, but in a largely unexploited terrain like Sarawak where boundaries of their influences have yet to be clearly demarcated, none is ready to compromise just that.
This is political reality in its crudest form. PKR and DAP have worked together politically for eight years now, from the erstwhile Pakatan Rakyat to today’s Pakatan Harapan. Unfortunately there are still overlaps in their vote banks that can potentially trigger an internal contest.
What happens in Sarawak today is merely an extension of such competition.
