Sarawak seat talks: PKR must avoid presumption

Terence Netto

PKR must tread carefully in seat-sharing negotiations with Snap which enters a decisive phase today when leaders of both parties come to grips on the issue, now that nomination and polling dates for the 10th Sarawak state elections have been fixed by the Election Commission.

It would help if PKR abandons the attitude that Snap are supplicants and not equal partners in talks that Snap insiders, talking on background, say are doomed to failure.

Contests in the polls scheduled for April 16 that would see PKR and Snap contending with BN candidates would bring glee to the latter as the splitting of votes for the opposition, especially in the 29 Dayak-majority seats, would enhance BN’s prospects of winning them.

That outcome would fly in the face of mounting evidence that the voters in Sarawak, especially the Dayaks, are ready for change.

The reports on the grapevine that the federal BN’s top two leaders had last weekend pressed Abdul Taib Mahmud to step down before the elections but found the chief minister recalcitrant enough to want to stay through another election have fortified the sense that the opposition is in for a good outing at the polls.

The last time a similar situation impended was in 1987 when the opposition Maju coalition, which included Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS), threatened the Taib Mahmud-led BN incumbents with dislodgment in hotly-contested state polls.

But BN pulled through and Taib went on to fortify his position as numero uno of Sarawak politics.

However, the past several years of recurrent reports of native customary land (NCR) land grabs and illegitimate wealth accumulation by Taib have stirred a witches’ brew of resentments against his administration.

Taib is seen as a liability that the BN can do without but telling him to leave is difficult for federal leaders who were in secondary school when this wily operator began to make his way up the ladder of federal and state politics in the 1960s.

In sum, BN are stuck with a lame duck, albeit one with a few tricks still left in his bag.

There is no doubt that Taib, like his uncle Rahman Ya’kub whom he succeeded as CM 30 years ago this Saturday, is a dab hand at the game of dividing and dispersing the opposition.

Acrimonious disagreement

Until six months ago, Snap, which is part of the Pakatan Rakyat coalition, was said to be interested in contesting in something like 12 seats (there are 71 in the state assembly), with good prospects of winning in three.

But the ‘midget’ outlook of the party changed when Daniel Tajem, who was unofficial adviser to PKR, crossed over to Snap, which has the enviable reputation of being Sarawak’s earliest multiracial political party.

Tajem (right) felt that he was being used as ‘window dressing’ for PKR, a role the former deputy chief minister who enjoys elder statesman’s status in the ranks of oppositionists did not relish.

Tajem’s joining Snap early this year had the effect of galvanising ex-PBDS stalwarts in PKR into joining Snap. The ex-PBDS cohort, including Tajem, found several things amiss with PKR.

Among them were the machinations of Sng Chee Hua, a financier who treats political allegiance like a chip to be traded on the bourse, and the attitude of PKR central that tended to favour unreliable types among Malay-Melanau oppositionists, some of whom are viewed as agents of BN.

Also, they watched with unease the divisive – and ultimately foolhardy – contest between Azmin Ali and Zaid Ibrahim for the deputy president’s post in PKR late last year and emerged from the experience doubting that PKR is a party of ideals.

They felt that PKR is just another peninsula (read: neo-colonial) party, with a decidedly Malay orientation. These two traits are off-putting to the Dayaks.

Hence the surge to enlist with Snap once Tajem decided to throw in his lot with the party he first joined in the late 1060s and was expelled from in the early 1980s.

Fresh infusion of funds

Snap, financially strapped until late last year, has had an infusion of funds, partly from a deeply resentful former financier of PKR central now determined on baulking his old firm, and partly from fat cats who are agents of BN.

Thus Snap are newly emboldened and wanting to contest in all Dayak-majority seats, save Ba’ Ke’ lalan, the bailiwick of PKR state chief Baru Bian, and Batang Ai, where PKR election director Nicolas Bawin is said to be strong.

Snap is on a course that is headed for acrimonious disagreement with PKR on seat-sharing whose details are set for final and, as several insiders fear, fruitless negotiations today.

It is an outcome that could have been averted, like the contest between Azmin and Zaid last year. In politics, more errors stem from presumption than from deliberate misjudgment.

 

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them. It is the ideal profession for a temperament that finds power fascinating and its exercise abhorrent.