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Quavering On The Precipice at Likas

My Chiaroscuro column in malaysiakini yesterday (20 July 01), which appeared lightly edited.

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malaysiakini

20 June 01

Quavering On the Precipice At Likas

CHIAROSCURO
MGG Pillai

The Likas byelection in Sabah, like Lunas in Kedah last year, takes centre stage. With polling tomorrow (21 July 01), the governing state and federal National Front coalition finds the going tough and difficult, the price for ignoring, and hiding, the political and cultural cracks and fissures in the state, not just in Likas. Lunas made the National Front tremble, Likas could well on the knife's edge.

Likas is more than a byelection. It is not if the National Front or the Parti Bersatu Sabah which should win, but if UMNO, a federal party which against all advice ventured into Sabah to keep the state under firm federal control, should be dictate to Sabah. Sabah UMNO, in reality, is firmly under federal control.

In the Likas byelection, all key officials are from the centre. The deputy prime minister (and UMNO deputy president), Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, oversees it, the UMNO youth and its chief, Hishamuddin Hussein Onn, is responsible for the campaigning, cabinet ministers fly in and out again, shooting themselves in the foot, the local UMNO and National front stalwarts out of the picture. This arouses unnecessary nationalist sentiments.

Dirty ditties

Mistakes are made aplenty, the most serious at nomination day last week. Why did not state and national leaders step in to stop Hishamuddin and his UMNO youth from singing dirty ditties to catchy music, in which the word "Liwat" (sodomist, and an allusive but unproven reference to the jailed former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim), was prominently used? A bit later, Puteri UMNO joined in.

Those watching this spectacle got turned off and walked away when the import of what was sung sunk in. No apologies were proferred. It would probably have been ignored, but when Keadilan chose to contest it, it became an unnecessary issue which UMNO cannot wish away.

Both Sabah UMNO and PBS expected, and hoped, the state Keadilan chairman, Datin Saidatul Said Keruak, would stand; when Christina Liew, a popular lawyer with a strong record of community service, filed her papers, the election itself became a national fight for survival for national UMNO and its arch rival, Keadilan.

But, in Likas, a Muslim candidate has little chance of success. The issue here is, to not put a fine point to it, race: only a Chinese candidate would have been acceptable.

Proxy fight

Keadilan had decided against contesting, but reversed itself to prepare itself for the Sarawak state elections later this year. PAS opposed it, but now work as backroom boys in Likas. The Barisan Alternatif is there in spirit.

Likas suddenly is, as Lunas was, a proxy fight, with UMNO itself in with a proxy. As in Lunas, UMNO Youth chief misbehaved: He went off on holiday amidst the campaign there and sang dirty ditties here. But could have been acceptable in Lunas is not in Likas.

UMNO wanted its own Muslim candidate in this Muslim majority constituency of 26,000 voters -- 15,000 to 7,000 Chinese and 2,000 non-Muslim natives; is split so badly that federal leaders had to paper the cracks and anger.

The National Front candidate, Yong Teck Lee, from the small Sabah Action Party (SAPP), is neither popular nor charismatic. The High Court had disqualified him in an election petition, and the electorate knows if his appeal fails, as it should on legal precedent, the candidate with the second highest vote would be appointed.

A strong UMNO leader and former chief minister, Harris Salleh, said he would vote for the National Front candidate if he is not Yong, a view echoed by several factions in UMNO.

Puppet on a string

A Muslim candidate is politically not possible in Likas if it is to win. So, both UMNO and PBS was caught in a loop when Christina Liew filed her nomination papers. The independent candidate is not given a chance.

Keadilan need not win to put UMNO and PBS in shell shock; it needs only 30 per cent of the votes for that. This is why UMNO and PBS attack Keadilan and not each other. Yong is, in other words, sidelined, a puppet on a string. One common thread through the four candidates, besides being Chinese, is they once were PBS members.

For a party not formally registered in Sabah, it has a backroom staff that frightens: the director of elections is Johari Abdul, who not so long ago was director of research at Biro Tatanegara, the psychological warfare outfit, in the Prime Minister's department.

Others switched sides after the Anwar affair put UMNO into virtual rigor mortis; another psywar officer is a PAS MP and the Lunas state assemblyman from Keadilan. If Lunas terrified UMNO, Likas doubly so, whether Keadilan wins or not.

The Keadilan factor

The UMNO campaign to discredit Anwar in Likas backfired because he has much residual support in Sabah, even in the state cabinet. UMNO Youth and Hishamuddin failed to blacken Anwar, indeed turned Sabah voters off.

Few expect Keadilan to win, but if its candidate gets about a third of the votes, it puts both PBS and UMNO on notice, and puts it on better ground in the expected Sarawak Council Negeri elections later this year.

This is hammered through in the Keadilan campaign, but all but ignored in the National Front's and PBS' campaigns. Yesterday, Yong carried the refrain further, even if jokingly, that he could be recognised by his bald head and sideburns: one would have thought that he should have been by his 16 years as state assemblyman for the area!

A proxy's dilemma

UMNO's proxy in Likas must win. A defeat and a good showing by Keadilan makes federal control in the state on notice. The cultural divisions within Sabah's Muslim community is more serious than between, say the Chinese and the Kadazan or even the Bajau, one of the Muslim communities.

This is glibly overriden with a mythical political unity that transcends the culture. This comes through sharply, again as in Lunas, at byelection.

An unmentioned but ever present issue is the federal heavy hand in Sabah's everyday affairs. Besides Islam, a sensitive issue in the largely Roman Catholic native communities, Sabah's economic growth is put through the hoops.

The growing political and administrative frustrations between Sabah and the centre, on the boil especially Labuan was ceded to the centre as a federal territory, is firmed by still-unconfirmed reports of oil findings that suggest reserves larger than Kuwait's.

If Kuala Lumpur is not careful, the political debate in Sabah could turn unnecessarily irredentist. In this equation, who wins, in UMNO's and PBS's eyes, is irrelvant, so long as it is the other and not Keadilan.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my