SARAWAK Pakatan Harapan’s biggest challenge in wresting the state from the newly formed Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) in the 2021 elections will be to win over the votes of the large and influential Malay-Melanau community, said political analysts.

A total of 29 out of the state’s 82 seats in the legislative assembly are Malay-Melanau-majority constituencies, but PH currently only controls 10 – DAP (7), PKR (3), said Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s head of Asian Studies Centre, Faisal S. Hazis.

Of the 10, none is a Malay-Melanau majority seat.

“That’s the biggest challenge Sarawak PH has to face – how to penetrate the 29 Malay-Melanau-majority seats,” said Faisal, who is an expert on Sarawak Malay politics, at a post-GE14 forum in Kuching recently.

He said a majority of the Malays and Melanaus voted Barisan Nasional in the May 9 elections.

“They had all the Chinese-majority seats in their pocket. They managed to reduce BN’s popular votes in Iban, Bidayuh (Dayak) areas and made significant inroads there but they hardly made a dent in the Malay-Melanau areas.”

Faisal said the scandals, allegations of corruption and abuse of power that led to the downfall of prime minister Najib Razak did not affect the Malay and Melanau voters in Sarawak, which was why many kept their faith in BN.

The senior research fellow at the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies said the Malays and Melanaus were “worried and there’s a sense of insecurity among them of what will happen to their interests under PH”.

“For three to four decades, the narrative espoused by Parti Pesaka Bumiutera Bersatu (the lead party in the Sarawak BN) is that ‘you (the Malay-Melanau) being the minority will lose power if you don’t stand solidly behind the party’.

“This is the kind of propaganda BN had been pushing to the Malay-Melanau voters that needs to be challenged.”

Malays make up about 24% of the state’s population with the Melanau making up only about 6%, but Sarawak has a Malay chief minister, a Melanau as governor and more than 60% of the heads of department in the civil service are Malays.

Malay faces

PH will then need to assure the Malays and Melanau that their interests and rights would be safeguarded even with a government takeover.

But it’s a big challenge as the coalition does not have a strong Malay leader in the form of Home Minister Muhyiddin Yassin in Johor, or former Selangor menteri besar and now Economic Affairs Minister Azmin Ali, and even Mukhriz Mahathir in Kedah.

“They need a Malay face who can rally the Malays,” said Faisal.

“The coalition is not there. Their narrative is not there and no Malay leaders in Malay areas.

“I don’t see them getting one in three years.”

Fellow political analyst from UKM, Abdol Hazis Faisal Syam, said Bersatu, the Malay-only party in PH, stands a chance to rally support for the coalition among the community.

Even though PKR has been in Sarawak for 19 years, it has failed to win support from the Malay-Melanau voters, he said.

“PKR has not won a single Malay seat after so many years. Not even close,” he said, referring to the party’s failure while wresting three Dayak-majority state seats and three Dayak and one Chinese parliamentary seats.

Hazis said Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s plan to bring Bersatu to Sarawak could offer a better alternative to the Malay voters in the state.

The move would also rattle the Sarawak GPS leadership on a few issues, Faisal said.

“By making this disclosure, he’s telling the GPS government ‘you throttle back on your demands for autonomy and return of lost state rights, we’ll probably reconsider about going there’.”

Although Bersatu could pose a threat to GPS by attracting the Malays to PH, loosening the stranglehold that PBB has on the community will still be a challenge, Hazis said.

“Difficult but nothing is impossible.”

The results of GE14 showed Sarawakians are willing to change and that the next state polls will surely be something to look out for, he said. – July 3, 2018.