DAP’s 11 year-old Dayak Consultative Committee (DCC) has failed to craft a strategy to win the support of Sarawak’s largest ethnic group, its former chairman John Brian Anthony said.

“The Dayak have been ingrained with the perception that DAP is a party not for them,” Brian said.

“It is common to hear the Dayak saying that DAP is a communist party or it’s a party only for the Chinese.

“The narrative is so bad that we don’t bother rebutting them.”

He said the committee has made some inroads in gaining the support of Dayak professionals and intellectuals, but that was about it.

In the state elections in December last year, DAP stood in 11 Dayak-majority seats and lost in every one of them.

After his appointment to DAP’s 20-member central executive committee in 2013, Brian roped in a couple of professionals working on the peninsula – Duwen Babat (Petaling Jaya) and Seliong Wau (Kuala Lumpur) – into the fledgling DCC.

He later appointed Miri dentist Dr Bob Baru, Sri Aman-based lawyer Peli Aron and former Sarawak Shell Bhd employee Edward Andrew Luwak to the committee.

Brian was to later quit DAP for the race-based Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak Baru. Babat, Wau, Aron and Luwak also ditched the committee.

Aron and Luwak have since joined the pro-independence Parti Bumi Kenyalang.

“The committee failed in its main objective to penetrate the Dayak grassroots,” Brian said.

“We tried our best but the voters had their own ideas.”

He said with the exception of Mordi Bimol, who won the first Dayak seat for DAP with the the Bidayuh-majority constitution of Mas Gading in 2018, the committee’s efforts did not translate into seats.

“We got some good people to contest for DAP but we were not successful.”

In the 2018 general election, DAP ran in 10 of Sarawak’s 31 parliamentary seats.

Among the 10, Mas Gading, Serian and Kapit were Dayak-majority seats.

Luwak made two futile attempts – in 2013 and 2018 – to unseat Sarawak United People’s Party deputy president Richard Riot in Serian.

University of Tasmania’s Asian political expert James Chin said DAP failed to gain the trust of the community because “they keep picking expired Dayak leaders”.

He said DAP is “desperate” for Dayak leaders, particularly those of the largest ethnic group, the Iban, and will settle for anybody who is available.

“John (Brian) was not credible.”

Chin said the Brian’s replacement, Bimol, will face the same problems and show the same results. – August 20, 2022.