By Sim Kwang Yang
The
running joke going the round in Sabah and Sarawak for decades has been
that you hear about these two East Malaysian states only during the
daily weather report following prime time news on TV.
Overnight within our new political landscape, these two large and
largely forgotten, marginalised and neglected states have been the
focus of media attention, thanks to the rumours of mass defection by
Sabahan and Sarawakian MPs to the Pakatan Rakyat coalition.
On my recent trip back to my home town of Kuching, I was told that a senior BN Dayak politician has been informed by Anwar Ibrahim that if the federal government should change hand, the chief ministers of Sarawak and Sabah would be a Dayak and a Kadazan respectively. For those who know the politics and the demographic of these two unique states well, such an offer would tip the political scale there in a radical manner.
Then, there is the open offer by Anwar that if the Pakatan Rakyat should take power at the federal level, the oil and gas royalty for Sabah and Sarawak would be raised from 5% to 20%, one way or another. This is a sensitive issue that has hurt the feelings of Sabahans and Sarawakians since the early years of their independence through the formation of Malaysia.
Although the people in these two Borneon states face different problems, they do share a long-standing, widespread, and deeply felt disdain for all things West Malaysian. Though the seething undercurrent of resentment has seldom been aired openly, it has always festered beneath the surface, smouldering from one generation of Sabahans and Sarawakians to the next.
Observations about Sabah, Sarawak
Their common complaint is the perception that Sabah and Sarawak have
been neglected by the central government in socio-economic
development. Today, Sabah ranks as the least developed state
throughout Malaysia, with Sarawak closely behind at number 11th.By
most socio-economic indicators, these two states are many decades
behind the Klang Valley.
These two states are also very rich in oil and gas. Therefore, there is the resentment that while they contribute so much to the national wealth creation through massive exploitation of the two states' fossil fuel, they are not getting their fair share of the fruits of development. There is this common feeling that perhaps the original social contract via the formation of Malaysia has been betrayed.
In an opinion piece entitled Sabah for Sabahans that appeared in the Star on May 15, Fui K Soong has this observation to make about the dire strait of Sabah:
"Sabah
ranked from being the richest state in the 1970s to being the poorest
state. Using UNDP"s numbers, Sabah has a poverty rate of 23% compared
to Wilayah Persekutuan-KL of 1.5%."
"In the district of Nabawan, the poverty rate is as high as 70%, as 20,568 households living in hardcore poverty. The drop-out rate is 50%, twice the national figure, and most schools located in the rural areas are equipped with very poor facilities."
"Children are so poor that they do not even have soap to clean themselves with. Children attend their classes naked because parents sell their free uniforms to feed their family."
"In the 9th Malaysian Plan, the total allocation for Sabah makes up 7.69% compared with 15.06% for the Federal Territory."
The situation in Sarawak is not much better. I should know, for I had travelled from one end of that state to the other during my tenure as MP, visiting hundreds of rural communities.
The employment prospect for Sabahan and Sarawakian youths in their home state is grim. There has been very little investment in industry. Wages are depressed. One hotel worker who has worked at the same hotel for 12 years still earns a miserly salary of RM400 per month, half that of an illegal foreign labourer in the Klang Valley.
Urgent unique problems
As a result, Sabahan and Sarawakian youths have migrated to West
Malaysia in search of jobs, and I was told that there are 400,000
Sarawakians in Johore alone! As Gawai Dayak on June 1
approaches, these workers will be looking forward to making that trip
back to their kampongs and their longhouses.
There are also a whole host of urgent unique problems haunting these two states.
In Sabah, the spectre of the massive presence of an alien population is their number one concern. Fui K Soong estimated the number of illegal migrants at two million, twice that of the native population of Sabah. According to her, Kota Kinabalu "is looking more like Manila than Malaysia."
(A senior Sabahan politician once told me in private that Sabahan must quash their ambition to secede from Malaysia, or else risk being taken over by The Philippines!)
In Sarawak, the widespread problem that haunts natives of all ethnic persuasion is the insecurity of their land tenure. They depend on their land for existence, especially in the deep interior. Their claim on land use is derived by a set of native customs, but in recent decades, their Native Customary Rights (NCR) have been summarily steamrolled by logging and plantation companies with horrendous consequence to the survival of the native farmers.
If
the PR coalition make this one single promise to Sarawakian voters
that, should they come to power in Sarawak, permanent titles will be
given to NCR land owners eventually, the BN state government may also
fall!
As long as the Umno dominated central government is strong and controls more than two-third majority in Parliament, the federal powers can afford to neglect and even ignore the issues burning in the breasts of Sarawakians and Sabahans. Federal ministers very seldom visit these two states, and the two chief ministers must kowtow to Kuala Lumpur for fear of having federal allocations being decreased or even cut off altogether.
But the last geeral election has turned the table around. Umno is able to hold on to power in KL at the pleasure of Sabahans and Sarawakians.
Those East Malaysian MPs of all races may all come from the BN camp. They may also swear allegiance to the BN. But they are Sabahans and Sarawakians first, and BN MPs second. They have deep primordial and abiding feelings for the land Below the Wind and the Land of the Hornbill.
That is why the Sabah MPs have been so characteristically vocal in Parliament during the past week, issuing ultimatum to the federal government that if things do not improve, nobody can blame East Malaysian MPs from jumping ship. It would seem that August is the dateline for the PM to turn his gaze seriously eastward.
Being active politicians, they are also pragmatic realists. They are aware of the changing mood of the people. The political tsunami that struck Peninsular Malaysia on March 8 may also sweep towards the north Borneo shores in the near future. The next big showdown will be in Sarawak, where a state general election id due in 2011.
With an ailing chief minister there in a state where the chief minister himself is the number one issue in state politics, there are many ways in which the Pakatan coalition can play their card. With Anwar Ibrahim freed from the encumbrance of directing West Malaysian politics then, he would be on the prowl in our Sarawak jungle, unless the Sarawak chief minister declares him as a persona non grata.
Issue close to my heart
Frankly,
I do not think that Anwar has the numbers. There would not be enough
MPs from Sabah and Sarawak who would jump ship and topple the BN
federal government. And even if that is at all possible, the majority
that Pakatan will enjoy in Parliament would be too thin for comfort.
Perhaps Anwar is merely playing a mind game with the BN leadership after all. If that is his intention, he has succeeded beyond expectation. He has exposed the long-veiled discontent from East Malaysia.
This is an issue very close to my heart. After all, I am an Anak Sarawak first, and a Malaysian second. I share this sense of identity with many of my Sarawak friends. Since I was born – at Jalan Padungan in Kuching 60 years ago – I have been nourished and nurtured by the sun and the rain over Sarawak.
I have suffered the pain of living under a polluted political sky in Sarawak all my life. I hate the backwardness, the poverty, the corruption, the primitiveness of politics in my home state.
Now I am 60, having fought the BN at the political front many times without avail. My dream is that the federal government should indeed change hands in my lifetime, and Umno be relegated to the opposition benches. With Sarawak and Sabah playing a king-maker role in this process, perhaps then we have a chance to review and rewrite that social contract first penned in 1963 when Malaysia was born.
If the Sarawak and Sabah MPs should jump and make this dream a reality sooner, then so be it. Who knows? This development may even be good for national integration!
This article was first published in Malaysiakini in 2009, and has been edited for Hornbill Unleashed.
