SARAWAK Dayaks are seething. They see the appointment of only one full minister from the state in the Pakatan Harapan (PH) Cabinet as Putrajaya’s failure to treat the state as an equal partner in the federation.

When Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad named the rest of his Cabinet on Monday, he appointed PKR state chief Baru Bian as Works Minister while Sarawak PH and DAP chief Chong Chieng Jen was only appointed Deputy Minister of Domestic Trade, Co-Operatives and Consumerism.

Dayak National Congress president Paul Raja was not only insistent Sarawak “should have at least three ministers, similar to Sabah”, he said there should also be a deputy prime minister for each of the partner states of Malaysia.

“A deputy prime minister for Sarawak, Sabah and Malaya.”

Raja said also both Baru and Chong deserved to be appointed full ministers for their role in spearheading the PH campaign in Sarawak in the May 9 election to break the long held myth that Sarawak is the Barisan Nasional’s (BN) fixed deposit.

“The importance of PH Sarawak to PH cannot be overstated.

“Out of the 113 PH MPs, 10 comes from Sarawak which means that Sarawak contributes about 11.3% of the total PH MPs.

“But in terms of ministerial appointment, the percentage of ministers from Sarawak is only 0.26% which is a gross disproportion,” Raja said.

“On the number of ministers, across the board there are dissatisfaction from Sarawak on the number.”

While political analyst James Chin of Tasmania University agreed that Sarawak “deserved at least two full ministers”, he however, sees the appointment of only one as “a signal to Sarawak voters that if they want more ministers they must vote PH in in the 2021 state election”.

Chin, an expert on the governance issues in Southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia, anticipated there will be a lot of unhappiness from Sarawak and Sabah as there were only four full ministers in the PH government from Sabah and Sarawak compared to the seven in the BN government of former prime minister Najib Razak.

“Many in Sabah and Sarawak will be questioning the number of full ministers appointed from East Malaysia.”

Chin said you can argue its because Sarawak is still under opposition control but in politics, perception counts especially in places like Sabah and Sarawak.

“By not appointing more ministers from Sabah and Sarawak, PH is playing into the hands of the nationalists who can now argue that Malaya is again ignoring the two Borneo territories.”

To right that perception, he anticipated the PH government would have a cabinet reshuffle before 2020, and have Sarawak get that second full minister.

“I am quite sure if Sarawak falls to PH in 2021, it will probably get two or more full ministers.” – July 4, 2018.