Sarawak the key to mood for change

By Angus Grigg

SYDNEY, Jan 30 — Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud drives a cream Rolls-Royce, wears a gem the size of a walnut on his ring finger and is said to have once paid US$2 million (RM7 million) for a piano owned by Liberace.

The Chief Minister of Sarawak, like the late American entertainer, is certainly flamboyant and he's been well rewarded for his 28-year rule of the resource-rich province. But his time at the top is coming to an end.

Having celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary last week, the man known as the "White Haired Raja" has begun talking about succession. The likely departure of the 72-year-old is sure to shake up local politics in Sarawak, but it could also have a profound impact at the national level.

The theory is that if Taib were to step down, fresh elections could be required in the state, as any successor would lack the influence to hold the local legislature together. This is an opportunity for national Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and his three-party coalition, which has been working hard for some time to woo voters outside Peninsular Malaysia.

If Anwar's PKR and its allies were to control the Sarawak state assembly, analysts believe it would be only a matter of time before MPs from Sarawak tapped the public mood and crossed the floor in Kuala Lumpur. This would hand the government to Anwar and bring about the biggest political change in Malaysia since independence in 1957.

Such a scenario is some way off, but it's the one confronting prime minister-in-waiting Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

That's why his government pulled out all stops to win a by-election in the state of Terengganu on Jan 17. It failed, handing another seat to the opposition, but the contest in the country's north-east is a case study of what to expect when the battle for Sarawak begins.

Even by Malaysia's lofty standards of political patronage, the Kuala Terengganu by-election was expensive. Najib and his ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, desperate to arrest its electoral fortunes, tried to spend its way to victory. The numbers are both appalling and beguiling.

All told, Najib, who is expected to take over from Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in March, handed out A$4.4 billion (RM10.5 billion) to voters. That works out at nearly A$55,000 for each voter in the seaside electorate. The big-ticket items were the establishment of a A$4.2 billion trust to manage the state's oil revenue and the well-timed handover of A$169 million in petroleum royalties.

But this was not the headline act. In a ceremony the local press described as "controversial", Najib Razak handed out A$25 million in government contracts to 600 local firms at a party rally. Even more cynically, the government gave A$21 million to Chinese schools in the district, just as it looked like the parents of these students would determine the election.

In the end, they didn't and the government lost because Malay voters deserted it, while the ever-cautious Chinese either sat out the election or voted for the opposition. And while a 2.5 per cent swing against the government is hardly a landslide, the by-election loss would be very worrying for Najib given the amount of money thrown at the problem.

"The government's traditional strategy of just buying votes failed," said political analyst Wong Chin Huat, who lecturers at Monash University's campus in Kuala Lumpur. "The win by the opposition showed the mood for change still exists in Malaysia."

This mood for change is also breaking down traditional rivalries in a country long divided by race and religion. The opposition coalition won in Terengganu despite fielding a candidate from the deeply conservative Pas. Not only did Pas gain more secular Malay voters, thanks to a moderating of its language, but it also did not scare off the Chinese.

This was despite Najib and the government doing their best to stoke racial and religious tension.

The victory is also a direct result of Anwar being able to hold together a coalition containing Pas, the Chinese moderates of the DAP and his own multiracial PKR. It is, to say the least, a diverse coalition, united in many ways only by its hatred of a government that has ruled Malaysia since independence.

Finding common ground will be the challenge if the opposition ever comes to power, but for now it's still focused on how to get there. Sarawak holds the key, and while patronage failed the government in Terengganu, it has long held sway in Borneo. — Australian Financial Review

Ku Li warns that global economic crisis will have a severe impact on Malaysia

Ku Li slams stimulus plan, says confidence required

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 15 - He never minced his words about the decaying political system in Umno and so it was only natural to expect Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah to offer an unvarnished view of the government's handling of the economy and the long-term prospects of the Malaysian dream.

Malaysia's former finance minister did not disappoint. He ticked off the government for failing to face up to the harsh truth that the global economic crisis will have a severe impact on Malaysia; described vividly how one of the most successful economies was now caught in the middle income trap, not innovative enough to join the premier league and yet not cheap enough to hold off the likes of Vietnam and India.

Ku Li, as the Kelantanese prince is popularly known, said that the key to restoring belief in the Malaysia economy was confidence.

"We need to restore confidence in our basic institutions, our leadership, the integrity of the Federation, the rule of law and our national Constitution... We need to restore confidence in Malaysia. Real confidence is hope based on an apprehension of the truth.

It is social capital and trust in society and its future. It is inspired by leaders willing to take us through an unflinching evaluation of where we are today to a vision of what we are capable of tomorrow.

"The country can no longer afford a political class out of touch with reality that trades on yesterday's political insecurities and a government that has forgotten its purpose. We need a renewal of leadership as a first step to restoring true confidence, '' he said at a luncheon talk at the strategic outlook seminar organised by Asian Strategic Leadership Institute.

He took to task government leaders for not telling Malaysians that while the country was relatively shielded from the first wave of financial failures there is no escape from the sharp demand slump in the global economy.

The country's growth this year could be well under the official estimates of 3.5 per cent, he feared, pointing to the sharp drop in industrial activity and the plunge in exports.

"There has been a dramatic swing in the balance of payments to a RM31 billion deficit in the third quarter, from a surplus of RM26 billion in the second. Anyone looking at the size of the downturn and at its swiftness can only wonder if we will be sailing through.

"Our leaders only undermine the government's credibility when they paint an alternative reality for us. I understand we don't want to frighten markets and voters unnecessarily, but we do not live in an information bubble. Leaders who deny the seriousness of the crisis only raise the suspicion that they have no ideas for coping with it. They undermine the government's credibility when that very credibility, that confidence, is a key issue, '' said the Umno politician whose offer to contest the top position in the party was met with a limp response from the ground.

The view in the party is that his time in politics has come and gone but even his most trenchant critics acknowledge that he still possesses one of the sharpest minds around.

Even if Malaysia achieved 3.5 per cent growth, it would not create enough jobs to employ the large number of young Malaysians who enter the workforce every year, he pointed out.

"Given our demographic profile and the fact that we are an oil exporter, our baseline do-nothing growth figure is not 0 per cent but closer to 4 per cent. We do have a problem. Now we need to acknowledge that we are not in good shape to deal with it. After early decades of rapid progress, it looks like that economic growth has flattened, our public delivery system calcified and our economic leadership run out of ideas,'' he said.

Malaysia, he noted, is squeezed between being "the low cost manufacturer we once excelled as, and the knowledge-intensive economy we are failing to become.''

"We are in the infamous "middle Income trap". No longer cheap enough to compete with low cost producers and not advanced enough to compete with more innovative ones, we find ourselves squeezed in between with no economic story, '' he said, noting that Malaysia's share of GDP contributed by services was 46.4 per cent in 2007, compared with 46.2 per cent in 1987 while real wages here during the same period grew 2.6 per cent.

What does it take to make the leap from middle to high income?

Ku Li noted that looking at the examples of Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore they had one feature in common: they were able to learn from previous crises.

"The criterion of success for making the developmental leap, the key differentiator between the leaders and the also-rans, is not immunity from economic crises (after all, if you have a Stone Age economy, you are completely immune) but the organizational capability of governments to learn and re-organize around new national economic strategies through these crises.

Each major crisis is either an important opportunity to transform the economy or a major setback to our ambitions.

"The question is whether our policymaking and policy implementing apparatus is set up, motivated and led to learn from this crisis. It is a question of the capability of government and governance, '' he said.

The world recession is a critical opportunity for Malaysia to re-gear and re-tool the Malaysian economy.

"We don't need another stimulus "package" of spending here and there. What we need, and what the crisis gives us a chance to implement, is a set of bold projects with an economic story behind them to help Malaysia make the developmental leap we have been missing.

We have a once in a lifetime economic challenge. We must meet this challenge with a historic sense of purpose, '' he said. ---The Malaysian Insider

Tear down Sarawak's bamboo curtain

Sim Kwang Yang
Malaysiakini Jan 3, 09 5:05pm

The banned entry of PKR MP N Gobalakrishnan into Sarawak on Christmas Eve has stirred up a mini-storm in both the Land of the Hornbills and the alternative media in West Malaysia.

Once again, the question on the mind of many Malaysians is this: why should a citizen require a passport or a permit to travel to a territory within the Federation of Malaysia?

To answer this question, we have to revisit the early days shortly before the formation of Malaysia in 1963.

It was a period of intense negotiations, fuelled by fear, confusion, and the imperative for the formation of Malaysia in view of the armed communist insurgency in Sarawak, the threat from the Indonesian Konfrontasi, and the recent armed revolt in Brunei led by Ahmad Azahari that spilled into Sarawak.

There were virulent voices in Sarawak against the Malaysian proposal then, mainly from the Sarawak Communist Party and their political front, the Sarawak United People’s Party (Supp). There was even talk of an alternative new political entity, to be composed of Sarawak, Brunei and the North Borneo Territory, later renamed Sabah.

For most pro-Malaysia political leaders in Sarawak, their greatest motivation was one of fear: the inability of the state to sustain itself on its own steam.

With a population of 800,000, and minuscule state revenue, how would Sarawak build its security forces to protect its territorial integrity? This Achilles’ heel had been made abundantly clear in those turbulent times of armed bloody conflicts in many parts of the state.

Another pull factor for these leaders was the successful land development programmes in Malaya at that time. It was thought at that time that if Sarawak joined Malaysia, the introduction of similar programmes would greatly help in the socio-economic development of this socio-economically backward state.

Then, another fear crept in. Some were worried that if the Sarawak immigration door was thrown open to the rest of the country, there would be a massive influx of West Malaysians, against whom, the yet-to-be-developed Sarawakians could not be able to compete.

Some kind of immigration safeguard was required to protect the interest of Sarawakians in the new federation of Malaysia.

Anti-Malaya resentment persisted today

This and other concerns have led to the signing of the Twenty Point Agreement that formed the basis of confederation of Malaysia, giving special, though limited, autonomy to Sarawak – and Sabah as well.

The sixth point of the Twenty Point Agreement states that:

“Control over immigration into any part of Malaysia from outside should rest with the central government but entry into Sarawak should also require the approval of the state government.

“The federal government should not be able to veto the entry of persons into Sarawak for state government purposes except on strictly security grounds. Sarawak should have unfettered control over the movements of persons other than those in federal government employ from other parts of Malaysia into Sarawak.”

In the 45 years since then, the socio-economic gap between East and West Malaysia has grown wider. The anti-Malaya resentment has persisted until this day.

When I first joined the DAP in 1978, the Chinese voters were told by SUPP not to support a West Malaysian party, a party from “outside”. It took over two decades of hard work, before the first DAP candidates were elected to the Sarawak state assembly.

Even today, I read on Dayak blogs calling for Sarawakians not to join the PKR because it is a political party from the “West”.

Most Sarawakians – including this writer – would support the continued existence of limited autonomy on matters of immigration in Sarawak. A case can perhaps be made for the abolition of such an apparent anomaly only after Sarawak has come to par in social economic development with the Klang Valley.

If it sounds parochial, it also has to be accepted that in a federation of states, regional peculiarity in politics is a fact of life. I should also mention in passing that English is still one of the languages spoken in the Sarawak State Assembly!

It’s an abuse of power

Having said all that, the declaration of Gobalakrishnan as a persona non grata does smack of abuse of power by the Sarawak state government in gaining unfair advantage over opposition parties in the state.

It did not come as a surprise, following the PKR announcement of making Sarawak and Sabah their frontline states amidst speculation of an early Sarawak state general election sometime this year.

PKR is the largest opposition party in the Parliament, and is one of the major partners in the ruling coalition in five peninsular states. Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim would become prime minister if he can seize the two jewels in the crown in East Malaysia.

If and when the hoards of the PKR army from West Malaysia descend upon Sarawak during a state general election, it is still to be seen whether the Sarawak BN can fight off such an assault.

Recently, Assistant Minister in the Chief Minister’s Department Daud Abdul Rahman (right) said that the ban on Gobalakrishnan was an isolated incident, and that in the past, Anwar and Lim Kit Siang had been allowed entry without much ado.

But there have been numerous precedents of such politically motivated ban on entry into Sarawak in the past.

No entry to even Tengku Razaleigh

In 1978, when the DAP crossed the South China Sea and began setting up new branches in Sarawak, DAP national leaders then had been banned too from entering the state at immigration check point.

Lim Kit Siang, Lee Lam Thye, and Karpal Singh had all to be carried on a wheelchair onto the return flight to Kuala Lumpur at the Kuching airport. I should know; I was there 30 years ago at the Kuching International Airport to witness the farce, as the secretary of the newly-formed DAP Kuching branch.

During the 1991 general election in Sarawak, I was the DAP Sarawak state chairman. I had arranged for Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, president of our then political partner Semangat 46, to campaign in some Malay constituencies.

Together with some other Semangat 46 luminaries, Razaleigh too was banned from entering Sarawak!

The latest victim of such a twisted ban has been Suaram director Dr Kua Kia Soong. He was making numerous trips to the interior of Sarawak on many fact-finding missions on the problems faced by the Sarawak indigenous communities. Apparently, his findings were deemed too unfavourable to the state government there.

The Sarawak BN ruling class has also consistently abused this power over immigration to reject local community activists their application for a passport to travel overseas.

Since the early 1990s, and especially after the Rio Earth Summit, Sarawakian NGO personnel and community leaders like Thomas Jalong of the SAM Marudi office, Jok Jau Evong of the Rumah Bawang Residential Association, Gara Jalong of the Long Geng Kenyah community, Raymand Abin of the Borneo Resource Institute (Brimas), Wong Meng Chuo of the Institute for Development and Alternative Living (Ideal) and others have all been denied their passports.

Likewise, NGO activists such as Chee Yok Lin of Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM) and Meenakshi Raman, (legal adviser of the Consumer’s Association of Penang) as well as several other NGO personnel from the Peninsular and Sabah are still refused entry into Sarawak.

Gobala ban not ‘isolated’ case

The original intention of the limited immigration autonomy bestowed on the Sarawak state government was meant to protect the socio-economic interests of Sarawakians.

But there has been a consistent trend in past decades for the Sarawak BN to abuse it to silence legitimate dissent from both within and without Sarawak. The declaration of the latest ban on a PKR MP as “isolated” is sheer humbug, balderdash, and nincompoop talk.

I am glad that Anwar has been appointed the head of the Sarawak and Sabah PKR.

The splintered and garrulous opposition forces will need a leader of his stature, tenacity, and resourcefulness to forge the widest possible rainbow alliance across ethnic, regional, religious, and party lines for a historic advance towards democracy and justice in these two dictatorial and backward states.

The way forward for Anwar in Sarawak will be fraught with traps, pitfalls, and quicksand.

One of these obstacles is the very real possibility that the state government there will declare him as yet another persona non grata.

In their desperation, the Sarawak BN leaders may even ban most of the Pakatan Rakyat leading lights from entering the state, including such well-known figures as Lim Guan Eng, Khalid Ibrahim and Nik Aziz Nik Mat. They are addicted in a compulsive manner to playing on an uneven field after all.

The PKR and the DAP lawyers in Sarawak would do well to dig out their statue books and law journal articles on this subject now. There must be a way of challenging the state government on their abuse of immigration powers.

At least, the ban on Gobalakrishnan should be filed in court to test the wisdom and the courage of the Borneo High Court.

Win or lose, such a court case would highlight how the Sarawak BN government has abused their control over immigration autonomy to protect their own interest rather than the interest of the Sarawak people.

It would indeed be a revealing statement on how fearful and desperate those Sarawak BN leaders are over the prospect of losing power in Sarawak. --- Malaysiakini.com

About the Author: SIM KWANG YANG was Bandar Kuching MP from 1982-1995. He can be reached at kenyalang578@hotmail.com.