LAST Saturday, we celebrated our 60th Malaysia Day, which marked the end of our National Month.

For Sabah folk, this year’s National Month celebration was significant as it was the first time in six decades that Sabah Day was celebrated on August 31.

Across the state border, Sarawak Day has been celebrated on July 22 every year since 2016.

Sabah people have reason to be cautiously optimistic this year. Since last year’s general election, negotiations have been ongoing to restore the state’s right to 40% of its revenue. The talks are expected to be completed by July.

Failure to reach a satisfactory settlement by then would undermine the trust of Sabah people in both the federal and state governments.

Political stability and institutional reform are perhaps the other areas that the political leaders of Sabah could look into.

Sabah has had the most the heads of state in the country, having been governed by 16 chief ministers since the formation of Malaysia.

In comparison, Sarawak has seen only six chief ministers (now called premiers) over the same period; Penang has sworn in only five chief ministers since Malaya’s independence in 1957. 

In recent years, Sabah has always been the state most affected by the national political instability.

For instance, when our country has our first change of government in 2018, the transition of power went relatively smoothly at the national level and in most of the states except Sabah, where two candidates, Mohd Shafie Afdal and Musa Aman, went to court to be declared the rightful chief minister.

Sabah was among the few states that had to hold elections amid the Covid pandemic to resolve a hung assembly following the fall of the federal government in 2020.

Following the 2022 general election, Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) Chief Minister Hajiji Noor quit Bersatu and Perikatan Nasional, which had lost power. Early this year, Warisan’s Shafie and Umno’s Bung Moktar Radin unsuccessfully attempted to topple Hajiji.

In May, the Sabah assembly enacted an anti party-hopping law to address the culture of party-hopping among the elected representatives.

Sabah was in fact the first state in Malaysia to enact anti floor-crossing legislation in the 1980s.

However, the law in the state and in Kelantan was struck down as unconstitutional by the court in the 1990s.

The current iteration of the law was enacted following the passage of similar laws in parliament and other states. 

Will the prohibition finally bring political stability to the state? It will definitely help to some extent.

However, the new political reality in Sabah, following the national trend, is that no single party or coalition can command a majority on its own.

The breakdown of ties between the two coalitions that contested the last state elections, Warisan-PH and GRS(PN)-BN, means that the two factions have now splintered into four or five independent players. New parties, such as Parti Kesejahteraan Demokratik Masyarakat (KDM), have also emerged.

In the past, there were only two or three factions in the state assembly at any one time.

Currently there are six factions – GRS, Pakatan Harapan, Barisan Nasional, PN, Warisan, KDM – comprising a dozen political parties in the state assembly. All of them except Warisan are part of the state government. 

The increased competition is a good sign for democracy. However, given how volatile Sabah politics has been in the past, it is important to ensure that competition does not get in the way of effective governance.

Sabah is a good place to initiate many of the reforms that are being mulled at the national level.

For instance, the proposal to set a term limit of 10 years for a head of government has been mooted since 2018. This is a good reform that Sabah could adopt.

A chief minister who knows he will have to step down in a decade will be less likely to engage in political manoeuvring to keep himself in office indefinitely.

Other politicians in the chief minister’s camp with ambition would also be more willing to wait for their turn.

It would also be a good idea to decentralise some of the chief minister’s power.

Local elections are a good way for the warlords to compete for power at the local level without pinning all their hopes on gaining power by becoming the government. Unlike states in the peninsula, this is within the power of the Sabah government to decide. – September 18, 2023.

* Rayner Sylvester Yeo is a member of Agora Society. He was born in Sabah and is currently residing in Kuala Lumpur. Having grown up in a mixed-ethnic, multi-faith family and spent his working life in public, private and non-profit sectors, he believes diversity is the spice of life.