Sarawak DAP’s folly – ‘Yang dikejar tak dapat, yang dijinjing berciciran’
Umar Mukhtar
It is without the slightest doubt that in the aftermath of the Sarawak PRN yesterday, the biggest loser is DAP. Not only did it lose five of the twelve seats it won in its biggest win ever in 2011, the more telling embarrassment of this loser is how DAP was ignored by the Dayaks, irrespective of their religious persuasions. As I indicated before, Dayak distrust of Chinese DAP is far greater than their suspicion of their Muslims/Malays counterparts.
Even the confident tone of Lim Kit Siang talking about Tasik Biru being the litmus test of DAP’s acceptability to the Dayaks indicated that he expected a very close fight there, it never materialise. LKS got his answer loud and clear. These natives are above the sectarian bitching that is the city-folk DAP’s hallmark in its political campaigning. Back to the drawing-board. This time have more respect for the Dayak’s political acumen.
And as if adding insult to injury, it fared very badly in the overlapping seats it had fought over with its Pakatan Harapan partner PKR; getting less votes than PKR in most of them. This is in spite of having boasting that an independent survey conducted earlier had shown that it will do better than PKR at the six respective Dayak constituencies. Batu Kitang, which was supposed to be a shoo-in was lost, maybe as punishment dished out by the voters at DAP and PKR childish quarrels.
The other embarrassing happening was PAN’s less than a couple of hundred votes when it squared against PAS. It lost every time, plus the miserable performance when it was fighting the windmills without PAS being present. Why did it run in so many constituencies? Maybe as a ward of DAP, it wanted to show how it will repay DAP’s charity by helping DAP capture the state in 2025. Fat chance.
Then there’s vintage PKR, trying to reap what it never sowed. It managed to retain its three seats nevertheless but not after exhibiting how a major national party can lose pathetically many times to independents in many Dayak constituencies. It fits into my contention earlier that PKR should withdraw from Sarawak to make room for an indigenous Dayak opposition party.
The self-congratulatory Twitter messages PKR leaders gave each other for putting up a good fight is like a broken record over decades of party leaders appearing only during elections. This time we are spared of the typical KETUM cock-and-bull excuses about ballot boxes being switched in the SPRM helicopters or thrown in the sea. That’s about the only improvement this time around. It makes losing more bearable.
But Anwar’s bullshit is now replaced by Ambiga Seenivasan’s who was fast to impart her decades of political experience by observing that the elections were not on a level ground. Did she mean that Chief Minister Adenan Satem is worse than Taib Mahmud in his political manipulations and manoeuvrings such that the opposition could win fifteen seats in 2011 compared to ten yesterday? Don’t talk through your ass!
And as if she is an old hand in political analysis, she tried to imply that the delineation favoured BN. How is that? By collecting BN voters to be majority voters in the new constituencies? Won’t the constituencies they came from suffer the dearth of BN voters to result in bigger opposition majorities? How come that did not happen? The simple truth is the opposition lost support, perhaps to Adenan’s political cunningness or charms?
How did DAP lose the support it had? Simply because voters do give others a chance provided that if it was found that it is not worth it, they say “vamoose”. Did the DAP ADUNs serve the constituents or were they busy with issues just to make the government look bad and then that’s it? Constituents do ask themselves if their lives have changed for the better after giving DAP their mandates? Their everyday lives matter. Too much hot air, it is DAP that must UBAH!
So now that it is obvious that Dayaks prefer to vote for a Dayak party, is there any chance that DAP will sponsor a Dayak party in Sarawak in the likes of its experience with the losing PAN? And DAP was fond of picturing Adenan as a new broom sweeps clean. I guess the DAP ADUNs elected in 2012 never swept at all. So they lost!
