Abang Johari (front, centre), who is GPS chairman and PBB president, with leaders and members of the component parties under the state’s ruling coalition, at a recent pre-GE meet in Kuching.
IN my column this week, I won’t be writing about what’s going to happen, or my personal take on the forthcoming general election (GE), which has just been announced to be held on Saturday, Nov 19, 2022; and neither will I be bombarding you with any past statistics and predictions on what’s likely to happen after all the votes are counted.
Most of all, I won’t even be speculating on how the political parties will likely fare either here, or in the peninsula across the South China Sea.
No, my only concern is on the parliamentary election in Sarawak and my personal opinion, formed from my own experience and observations since the very first parliamentary election held in Sarawak on July 29, 1970 (although called for in 1969, it was delayed due to the Emergency of that year).
Since then, Sarawak has held 12 parliamentary elections, the last being on May 9, 2018.
It’s now been four years and six months – just six months short of the mandatory five years, but during which time we have seen a Pakatan Harapan (PH) government of 22 months, and a ‘rag-tag’ one (some would even term as ‘cobbled together’) during the last 32 months!
During the 2018 parliamentary election in Sarawak, the current ruling state government of Gabungan Parti Sarawak, or the GPS (back then, it was still under Barisan Nasional) had won 19 of the 31 seats contested; the DAP, six; the PKR, four; and Independents, two.
The two Independents support the GPS; thus leaving only 10 Opposition seats out of 31, just about one-third.
From past electoral results, it can be surmised that the majority of those who had voted for the Opposition parties of DAP and PKR were mainly urban voters, mostly Chinese and non-Muslim Bumiputeras. The overwhelming majority in the rural constituencies have been loyally supporting the government parties since 1969, and even earlier.
Sarawak state itself has always been governed by an alliance of political parties and usually in the multi-racial combination of a very strong (and growing stronger at every general election) ‘big brother’ of PBB, SUPP (Chinese), PRS (Dayak) and other what I’d term as ‘mosquito parties’.
Hopefully after this election, there wouldn’t be any successful ‘Independent’ candidates due to the recent legislation of the Anti-Party Hopping law.
So back to my question – do we really need an Opposition in Parliament?
This is a very different question then – do we need an Opposition at all? The latter is useful as within the state election, a strong Opposition at local state level still works rather well, as these ‘guard-dogs’ would often raise pertinent issues or queries at the State Legislative Assembly (DUN) sitting to the respective local state ministries and other authorities concerned, and can actually make their presence felt and bring forth local state issues.
This, however, is virtually non-existent at parliamentary level. There is often not sufficient time even for all MPs to speak, debate or discuss issues of the day – even the government ministers themselves get side-lined more often than not.
So what can a minority party Opposition member do to make his voice heard? Virtually zilch.
To be really honest, how many times or how often have you seen or heard any one of the 10 Opposition MPs from Sarawak stand up and speak, or hold a press conference on vital issues of the day during the past four years six months of their MP status?
If I’m not wrong, I’ve only seen and heard from Chong Chieng Jen (CCJ) and Dr Kelvin Yii, both from DAP.
As to how effective they’ve been at all, I’d leave that to your judgement.
I’d even venture one step further to say that even if we increase the number of newly-elected Opposition members in the next Parliament by 50 per cent, to 15, what difference would that make?
Personally, it makes more sense to elect an MP from a party that you know or feel would most likely be able to form the next government (hopefully this time around, a more resounding overall result unlike the previous ‘almost hung’ Parliament), and that this MP of yours has a better chance of becoming a federal minister or even assistant minister, or at least a member of the new government, so that you can really have a voice.
Hopefully then, you’d be able to lobby for your own community’s interests, or whatever issue that you are championing.
In the past, the general battle-cry at election campaigning time during the very well-attended public rallies and campaign trails, the Opposition parties, especially the DAP, had been fond of saying: “Vote us in as Opposition so you can have your voice heard – or a louder voice – and to ensure that there is some balance of power, or we can bring up and bark at all the wrongdoings, etc.”
So right, the voters did in fact, in 2018, vote them in, and together with PKR, together with Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and the rest.
So what did they do? They have now turned around and said: “Oh, the 22 months were too short – we didn’t have enough time to carry out our campaign promises, besides which we were sabotaged halfway.”
Sorry to be harsh, but the plain truth of it all, besides being betrayed at the end by Tun M himself, obviously the entire machinery of the long-entrenched civil service being totally imbedded with ‘Umno-crats’ and ‘Umno-putras’ and all the ‘little Napoleons’ at all levels, and the totally corrupt system of bureaucracy (at federal level) didn’t help – I couldn’t help it but the feeling that I got was that you were all dragging your feet and had taken too long to jumpstart your new ideologies, besides having no idea of what proper governance was all about.
C’mon, just a simple example – some of the newly-installed DAP powers in the ministries were already starting to ape the bad old Umno ways of appointing their own cronies and relatives to positions of power in NGOs and government-controlled bodies.
I could give you names, but I’m sure many of these appointments were open secrets.
Of course by now, these appointees are out again, either their terms have expired or they were swiftly replaced.
Let’s just take an objective look at what the 10 opposition MPs in Sarawak have done in the past four years, six months of their ‘service’.
I’ve read about and actually seen Dr Kelvin Yii doing the rounds, visiting schools and charitable organisations, giving out his allocated MP funds to the needy folks and societies, and generally speaking out and lobbying for and championing causes and issues.
I’ve even met CCJ a few times getting his party’s message across, selling ‘The Rocket’ mouthpiece newspaper from kopitiams to five-foot-ways, and getting in the news generally, even if it’s just representing his assistant being sued for slander.
Most of the time, they spent their time pointing at faults with rubbish-clogged public drains and waterways, poorly built roads and bridges, badly managed facilities and the like — stuff that a phone-call to Talikhidmat would be able to fix in a jiffy.
Why bother an MP with such trivialities?
Although I am of the opinion that this time around we should elect candidates from GPS for the forthcoming GE, it doesn’t mean that I am not a supporter of capable, constructive and really independent members from the opposite camps.
Personally, I fully support MPs like Baru Bian (although not his current party), and the likes of YB See Chee How at the state level (although being an Independent right now, he’s rather ‘toothless’ politically).
Baru Bian, one of the few MPs from the Opposition camp who is outstanding.
My overall impression, and it’s a highly personal one, is that so long as a state like ours is being governed fairly, efficiently and by a very benevolent alliance of these four multi-racial based parties, we can sleep soundly.
With such competent and trustworthy leaders like our current Premier Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Abang Johari Tun Openg, and the two deputy premiers known to me, Dato Seri Dr Sim Kui Hian and Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas, and their comrades, I am pretty confident that they are holding the fort of Sarawak well.