AS Sabah prepares to go to the polls on Saturday, what has become clear is that the elections are being fought on multiple issues.

What drives urban voters does not necessarily drive their rural counterparts.

Defectors are not always reviled. One party hopper may be detested in Kota Kinabalu but another could be celebrated for his work in the kampung.

Grab driver B.K. Chong in downtown Kota Kinabalu laughs at the very idea of re-electing Inanam assemblyman Kenny Chua on Saturday.

“That’s a katak,” he said. “I would never vote for him again.”

“Katak”, or frog, is a local term used to describe politicians who defect to other parties after they are elected.

Chua, who is formerly the Sabah finance minister under the Warisan government, was among six assemblymen who had “hopped” over to Perikatan Nasional (PN) in July in an attempt to topple the state government.

Chong said Chua had betrayed the mandate he was given in 2018.

“We voted for him as he was from PKR and in turn part of Warisan and the Pakatan Harapan coalition. But he went and jumped to the other side. That’s unacceptable,” said the Inanam constituent in Mandarin.

“Moreover, his track record in the last two years in Inanam has not been great. Inanam is still Inanam.

Masidi’s ‘always here for us’

In Karanaan, 62-year-old Johan painted a very different picture of another defector, assemblyman Masidi Manjun.

“He may have changed parties but he’s always here for us,” said the Kg Kibbas resident.

“Whether he was in Umno or in Warisan or in Bersatu, he always comes when we call him. And unlike many other politicians, he never makes promises he can’t keep.

“Of course, he can’t do everything we ask but we know he tries his best.”

Masidi, who was just in Kg Kibbas on Saturday, is among the Sabah assemblymen who have changed parties since 2018.

Although Masidi had defended Karanaan for a fourth term under the Umno ticket in the 2018 general election, he, along with Sabah Bersatu chief Hajiji Noor and five other MPs joined Bersatu, who was a part of the Warisan state government and Pakatan Harapan federal government in 2019.

The situation changed again when Bersatu quit PH to start the PN government with the opposition. Masidi and the others are now contesting the former Umno seats under the Bersatu/PN banner.

Rural relationships

Rural voters are more likely to depend on their assemblymen compared to their urban counterparts, although there is no empirical study on to prove this, said Universiti Teknologi Mara’s Firdausi Suffian.

“YBs in the rural seats are seen as a source of support, be it financial or otherwise. But then again, much depends on the lawmaker’s performance on the ground level too,” said the political science senior lecturer, referring to assemblymen by the abbreviated honorific.

“Urban voters, on the other hand, usually have sufficient infrastructure in place already. Moreover, they will direct their complaints to the local government or city council when problems arise.”

In the 2018 general election, Warisan and PH candidates won 14 of the 15 urban state seats in Sabah.

In the four parliament constituencies of Sepanggar, Kota Kinabalu, Putatan and Penampang, Warisan and PH made a clean sweep of all the nine state seats. In urban Libaran, Batu Sapi and Sandakan, the allies took five of the six state seats, leaving only Sungai Sibuga to former chief minister Musa Aman.

The coming state elections see the addition of 13 new seats, three of which are in urban areas –Darau (Sepanggar), Tanjung Keramat (Putatan) and Sungai Manila (Libaran). This takes the number of urban seats in Sabah to 18.

Although these seats make up only 24.6% of the 73 state seats, they house contain 30%, or 338,000 voters, of Sabah’s 1.12 million voters.

The seats surrounding Kota Kinabalu hold the most number of voters with Kapayan topping the list at 30,034 followed by Inanam (26,035) and Luyang (25,775). In contrast, Gabungan Rakyat Sabah seats, such as Banggi (5,961) in Kudat, Sugut (7,862) in Beluran and Lamaq (8,159) in Kinabatangan, have far fewer voters.

The RM300 question

In a popular seafood noodle restaurant in Likas, a worker who identified himself as Wong said he had not received the RM300 Covid-19 assistance promised by the Warisan government.

When told that it was a common complaint from Tuaran to Kg Penyu to Tambunan, Wong said he understood why rural Sabah folk were upset with Warisan.

“I don’t really need it,” Wong said.

“This won’t change my vote for Warisan. They represent fairness and for me that’s more important than their mistakes.”

For Warisan Plus to keep Sabah, it will need all the urban voters it can get on Saturday. – September 23, 2020.