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The politics of integration

SEVEN MEN DIED WHEN a helicopter crashed in northern Sarawak three weeks ago. Among the dead was an assistant minister in the state government. A regrettable accident, when high ranking officials died with him. The media and press in peninsular Malaysia, which all but ignore events in Sabah and Sarawak, pulled all stops to report the search in excruciating detail. In fact, more space was given to the crash than any event in the two states in the past two decades. Yet, the reporters continued naming the wrong woman as the widow of one dead even after the mistake was pointed out.

So, why was the coverage so extensive and even intrusive? It had to do with local politics. There has been an unmentioned revolution by stealth in the state National Front (BN) coalition: the Melanau community, forming six per cent of the state's population, is now in total political control of the coalition and the state. Its leader is of course the chief minister, Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud. When the federal agriculture minister, Dato' Nawawi Endawie, resigned, he was succeeded by a Melanau, albeit a Christian, Dato' Lee Michael Toyad. It is a Melanau, Muslim or Christian, who succeeds best in Sarawak politics.

This is so well consolidated, with UMNO kept out of it, that the other largely Iban and other native tribes band forces to challenge the Melanau. No one talks of this in public, but the political undercurrents point to newer and younger leaders demanding a better political accommodation for their communities. This explains why the neurosurgeon-turned-politician, Dr Judson Sakai Tagal, the assistant minister who died in the helicopter crash, was so important to this realignment.

His death deprived one leader in this push for a political realignment. They believe their older leaders were more interested in their own political positions than the needs of their communities. The newspapers in the peninsular represented a federal desire to clip the Melanau wings in Sarawak. It was to 'prove' to them that Kuala Lumpur 'cared' for them, and would stand by them in their desire for a rightful place.

In Sarawak and Sabah, this realignment of political forces cuts across religious and tribal boundaries as the second generation of politicians join hands to beat off the federal intruders, whom they call 'neo-colonialists', that an incipient but nevertheless real tribal nationalism emerges, mostly in secret and subsumes official politics. Some of the strongest of them in Sabah are UMNO members and in the state cabinet. In Sarawak, it is in UMNO's political interest to support the political underdogs who, in truth, are in the majority, more to clip the Melanau wings and let the new force fight on with its blessings.

UMNO went into Sabah a decade ago to clip the wings of the Kadazandusun community. All it did was to unite the disparate tribes into a powerful force, their strength growing with each electoral delineation of constitution which reduced their hold on the state government. In 1994, it promised heaven and earth to throw out the governing Parti Besatu Sabah, then as now led by Joseph Pairin Kitingan.

Amongst others, it promised 40,000 low cost houses, several hundred kilometres of railway track, several district hospitals, cheap transport for travel between the Borneo states and the peninsular, formal integration into the federal setup. A decade on, they remain a pipe dream, with no interest in Kuala Lumpur to put their promises into practice.

No one talks of it now, not in public, but the Sabahan anger is real. It worsened when the then chief minister, Tan Sri Harris Salleh, ceded Labuan to the federal government. This anger cuts across party, tribal, religious lines. At least one state cabinet minister who in public backs UMNO would move swiftly to the Sabah-for-Sabahans camp once it takes off.

Paradoxically, the one Malaysian politician whom this group has much time for can do little for them: Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who as you would know by now, is otherwise indisposed until 2008. But the support for him is real: One asked me: "What is UMNO without Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim?" The inference being that since Anwar is not in UMNO, why should they?

UMNO's entry into Sabah was a major mistake, for which the full price is yet to be paid. It wanted to control the state from Kuala Lumpur. The initial euphoria for it came from those not in the government, who believed that siding with the peninsular UMNO was the quickest way to return to political power, and to keep the largely Christian and animist Kadazandusuns out of political power.

It did not work. Dato' Seri Pairin Kitingan is deputy chief minister in the present cabinet in Kota Kinabalu, and chief minister in the next round. UMNO thinks it has quashed that to insist that the UMNO chief minister will not make way for anyone because it has an absolute majority in the state National Front (BN) coalition. But a welter of opinion, even in UMNO, want a Sabahan with no ties to Kuala Lumpur to be chief minister.

But it highlights the condescension the Peninsular reserves for its poor cousins in Sarawak and Sabah. Poor cousins, did I say? They are now. They would not be long. By 2007, for instance, Petronas's five-per-cent oil royalties to Sabah would exceed its total budget. In Sarawak, which had a functioning oil industry for nearly a century, had been awhile.

In the Peninsular, the federal government refuses to hand over the Petronas royalties to Trengganu when it was run by the opposition PAS, when it realised that the state could survive on the royalties and without begging for federal handouts. UMNO had to be in control of Sabah. For a good reason: Sabah's oil reserves are larger than Kuwait's. Sabahans believe Kuala Lumpur wants to be in control of the state, by force if necessary.

There is some truth in Kuala Lumpur accused of being neo-colonialists. The federal government subborned the leaders of both Sarawak and Sabah to get them to sign on the dotted line. The Cobbold Commission, which looked into the formation of Malaysia, was surprised that the two states went into the Malaysian federation so meekly, after its strident opposition to it before the Commission. But once Sabah and Sarawak was in Malaysia, the old leaders were discarded, and those it wanted were put in place. The leaders who followed were more interested in building up their empires than do what they were elected for. They stayed too long. And ignored their communities.

The relationship between the Borneo states and the peninsular is one of rulers and the ruled. Kuala Lumpur insists on the form, not the substance, to prevail. So it is not East and West Malaysia, but the Peninsular and the Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak. Kuala Lumpur reckoned that if the two halves were designated as East and West, especially when it separated by a land mass or the sea, irredentist tendencies could develop in one.

But these younger leaders now ask: how would this change if Malaysia is described as the East and West Malaysia rather than the peninsular and Sabah and Sarawak? Especially if the federal mindset had not changed.

High officers from Sabah and Sarawak play second fiddle to Peninsular officials. Why are most headmasters in the two Borneo states from the peninsular? Why are there not an equal distribution of senior and junior officers from the two states in the peninsular? Why is there no rotation of judges from Sabah and Sarawak with the peninsular judges?

No secretaries-general or heads of federal departments or almost no senior diplomats from the two states. The armed forces are seen as an army of occupation. The ministers from Sabah and Sarawak in the prime minister's department grumble because they have no authority, there to show the two states are represented, a token.

This divide can only widen. There is no desire in Kuala Lumpur to address the growing nationalism among the Sarawakians and the Sabahans. The first generation could be controlled. But the second begin to ask questions for which there are no clear cut answers. For the unfortunate reality is that Kuala Lumpur has failed Sarawak and Sabah every time. Its priorities were wrong. It thought it could govern Sabah and Sarawak through local proxies. Local political pressures were too strong for that to happen. For the moment, Kuala Lumpur is in control. But for how long?

[This is my Chiaroscuro column in malaysiakini today, 03 August 2004.]

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com