The Malaysian Insight is running a series on marginal parliamentary seats as the nation heads towards the 14th general election. In Baram. PKR’s candidate in 2013, Roland Engan, is bracing for a tough fight if he is selected to run against BN.

AS far as local issues go, the Baram federal seat deep in the Sarawak interior should be ripe for the opposition’s picking.

For one, the Baram dam, a project pushed by the ruling Barisan Nasional state government, has been suspended following protests but there are fears it will be revived again.

PKR tried and failed to win the seat, one of the largest in Sarawak, in the 2013 general election by a sliver of 194 votes to BN. PKR’s candidate then, Roland Engan, is expected to be fielded again in the 14th general election this year.

This time, Engan faces a tough fight after the state’s re-delineation of electoral boundaries in 2015.

Baram stretches the breadth of the Bornean state, yet in 2015, this rural constituency had only 31,476 voters. Of this, 17,391 were Orang Ulu tribespeople and the rest were ethnic Iban.

In comparison, the urban Bandar Kuching constituency, which is 100 times smaller and could fit in one small corner of Baram, had 81,992 voters.

The state’s re-delineation exercise created the Mulu state seat, an addition to Baram’s two other state constituencies, Marudi and Telang Usan. The exercise also raised the number of seats in the Sarawak legislative assembly from 71 to 82.

All three state seats are held by BN, following the Sarawak elections in 2016.

The Baram incumbent is Anyi Ngau, a former Marudi district officer who ran under the Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party (SPDP) ticket and won it by the skin of his teeth in 2013.

Anyi polled 9,182 votes while PKR’s Engan, then touted the “hot favourite”, received 8,988 votes. Independent candidate Patrick Sibat took 363 votes.

Engan, PKR’s Baram branch chief, had centred his campaign on voters’ opposition to the proposed construction of the Baram hydro-electric dam.

If the mega-dam – designed to generate 1,000Mw of electricity – were built, it would submerge 400 sq km of pristine tropical forest which the natives depended on for food. 

Some 20,000 of them would also need to be resettled, while ancestral graves and settlements which have become tourist attractions would also have gone underwater.

PKR’s weakness

Engan, who is still PKR and Pakatan Harapan’s pick for the marginal seat, was candid about his loss and wants to rectify it at the next polls.

“We lost in 2013 due to our own weaknesses. We had a weak election machinery and there was poor planning.

“We did not get the voters out before and on polling day,” he said.

There had been many Baram voters living and working in Miri whom PKR failed to persuade or help to return home to vote, he added.

But the lawyer said he still feels PKR stands a chance to unseat BN in Baram because of fears of a revival of the Baram dam, unkept promises by the ruling government and distaste over gerrymandering in the state’s re-delineation exercise.

One of Baram’s favourite sons, environmental activist Peter Kallang, said Baram locals were taking the current moratorium on the Baram dam “with a pinch of salt”.

“Why do you think people are still manning blockades (to the proposed dam site)?

“It’s a sign that we are sceptical. We are not taking the government’s words on it. There is talk the dam will eventually be built.”

The moratorium was imposed in 2015 by Sarawak’s late chief minister Adenan Satem after protests by Baram natives. He died in January last year.

Kallang, who led the fight to stop the dam as chairman of conservation group Save Rivers, said Orang Ulu voters, in particular, were watching to see what the BN government would do in the proposed dam area.

Kallang added that BN has yet to fulfil election promises it owed to Baram voters dating back to the 1990s, among them a clinic at Long San.

“(Prime Minister) Najib (Razak) promised a RM20 million feeder road to Long Silat when he visited Baram during the last elections.

“People here still have not seen anything resembling a road. There have been lots of promises but most of them are not fulfilled and it’s fuelling strong support for the opposition.”

A few hundred votes

Political analyst James Chin agrees the Baram dam might be revived down the road because there does not seem to be any other big project slated for the constituency.

It gives Engan a fighting chance, but Chin of the University of Tasmania’s Asia Institute said the outcome is too close to call.

Based on feedback, he said he expects a rematch between Anyi and Engan and the battle will be tougher for PKR this time because of the 2015 state re-delineation.

The re-delineation brought in “a few hundred voters” to the Baram seat, Chin said.

The 2016 state elections when BN won all three state seats in Baram are also an indicator that the ruling party remains strong.

Marudi is held by assistant minister for local government and housing Penguang Manggil from SPDP, Telang Usan by Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu’s (PBB) Dennis Ngau and the new Mulu seat by deputy state assembly speaker Gerawat Gala, also from PBB.

But a few hundred votes in a seat like Baram can make all the difference. The constituency has seen independents contest in nearly every election since 1969, in part because of the fractious nature of Sarawak political parties.

That is why Engan is unsure about his chances in a three-cornered fight. His last one in 2013 threw him out when independent candidate Sibat took 363 votes, causing his narrow loss to Anyi.

Assuming Sibat’s votes had gone to Engan, the outcome would have been rather different.

“I hope for a straight fight,” he said. – January 15, 2018.