Is a racial divide breaking out in Sarawak after GE13?

Sarawak PKR chief Baru Bian says the Bumiputera do not mind PKR taking the lead, but they do not want the DAP to do so. – The Malaysian Insider pic, July 11, 2014.On the eve of the April 2011 Sarawak state election, Zainal, a Kuching resident, looked at a DAP rally that was taking place across the road from his restaurant and shook his head.

“We Malays are afraid, if we vote for the opposition, the Chinese will take over and the Malays will be finished,” said the Kuching resident in his 50s.

This sentiment was shared by many in the Malay community.

The voting patterns in 2011 and 2013 appear to suggest that a racial divide is breaking out in Sarawak which has always prided itself on being ethnically harmonious.

As the DAP managed to capture more votes from urban voters and increase its tally of parliamentary seats in the 2013 general election, it had the opposite effect for its partners, PAS and PKR.

These two parties, which thought they could rely on support from the Malay and Melanau community, saw these voters returning to the Sarawak Barisan Nasional.

Sarawak’s political landscape is now fractured with the opposition being made up of mostly Chinese legislators on one side and the government with mainly Bumiputera representatives on the other.

A study by Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) of voting patterns between the 2008 and 2013 general elections and the 2011 state election and conversations with Melanau Bumiputera in Sarawak seem to suggest so.

The study revealed a shift in support among Malay-Melanau voters from 2008 to 2013.

Unimas political scientist Dr Faisal Syam Hazis said in 2008, Malay-Melanau support for BN declined while votes for Pakatan went up. But in 2013, the trend was reversed. Whatever support Pakatan had gained from the Malay-Melanau community shifted back to the BN.

This occurred against a backdrop of DAP capturing more political territory in 2013. After winning 12 Chinese majority state seats in 2011, it gained four more parliamentary seats in Sarawak last year.

Unlike in the peninsula, Malays are the third largest community in Sarawak. In some government statistics, they are lumped together with Melanau – another ethnic group whose members include Christians.

According to the Statistics Department, the Iban form the largest group at 29% followed by the Chinese community at 24%.

But the size of their community does not reflect their standing in Sarawak politics.

For instance, the Chief Minister, Tan Sri Adenan Satem, is Malay. The previous minister, Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud, was a Melanau Muslim as was his predecessor, Tun Abdul Rahman Yakub.

This is one reason why Malays are among Sarawak BN’s most loyal supporters. In 2013, 81.4% of the Malay-Melanau popular vote went to the BN, according to the Unimas study.

However, three years before that, the BN only got 73.4% of the community’s popular vote.

Faisal said support among Malay-Melanau for the BN began to drop in the 2008 election.

“But after they saw how the DAP was making major breakthroughs in the 2011 election, especially among the Chinese, urban Malays who had voted for Pakatan before shifted back to the BN,” Faisal told The Malaysian Insider.

Almost all of the DAP’s victories were in Chinese majority areas.

“There was a feeling that if the DAP won a lot of seats, Malays will lose power to a numerically superior community.”

Sarawak PKR chief Baru Bian admits this voting trend among the Malays and Bumiputera occurred in 2013.

“There is a feeling among Muslim Bumiputera that if Pakatan became the government, PKR would be beholden to the DAP. The Bumiputera do not mind PKR in the lead, but not the DAP,” said Bian, who is also the Ba’Kelalan state assemblyman.

But many other politicians from the DAP and Sarawak BN don’t see racial motivation in the voting trends.

Sarawak DAP chief Chong Chieng Jen says support for Barisan Nasional increased because of the BR1M payouts. – The Malaysian Insider pic, July 11, 2014.Sarawak DAP chief Chong Chieng Jen does not believe the Muslim Bumiputera or Malays fear the DAP.

“Support for the BN went up because of BR1M (Bantuan Rakyat 1Malaysia) payouts. There was a lot of money used in the general election,” said the Bandar Kuching MP.

Neither is the DAP Chinese-centric Chong says. Out of the 11 candidates it fielded in 2013, six were Bumiputera while five were Chinese.

Datuk Wilfred Nissom of Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS), on the other hand, believes that much of the support for the DAP was from disgruntled supporters and members of the Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP).

Although the SUPP is officially a multiracial party, it is dominated by Chinese leaders. Its support base is in the Chinese-dominated seats which the DAP also contests.

In the 2008 general election, when the Pakatan “tsunami” swept through the peninsula, the SUPP managed to retain all six parliamentary seats it contested except for the Bandar Kuching seat.

But in-fighting and a leadership tussle that broke out in the party before the 2011 state election derailed much of its machinery.

Frustrated members and supporters cast protest votes against SUPP candidates in 2011 and 2013, said Nissom, who is a senior political secretary to the chief minister.

Another BN leader, Abdullah Saidol of Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB), believes the Chinese voting trend in those two elections were an aberration and driven by their dissatisfaction towards the SUPP.

“The results do not mean that there is a political divide in Sarawak. They voted for the DAP because they were frustrated by their SUPP elected reps,” said Abdullah, who is chief political secretary to the chief minister.

Yet, like in the peninsula, perceptions tend to persist.

PKR’s Bian said in Johor, the DAP’s inroads in 2008 led to a surge in support for Umno among Malays in 2013 as the party moved its campaign deeper into Johor.

Faisal said that one of the problems faced by the DAP’s partners, PKR and PAS, in making a headway in Sarawak is the lack of party-building among PKR and PAS.

“Without any presence and programmes how are people going to know you and support you?”

The DAP, on the other hand, has been steadily making its presence felt since it was founded in 1978 in Sarawak.

As it campaigns in mostly urban seats where there is Internet access and whose populations are coincidentally mainly Chinese, the DAP had a better chance of winning.

Realising that it needs to widen its reach beyond its Chinese support base, it is now actively holding small-scale development projects deep in Sarawak’s interior among the Bumiputera community.

This initiative, said PBB’s Abdullah, supports his contention that there is no racial divide in Sarawak.

“If they were a really Chinese party why would they go in and try to win over Bumiputera votes? If there was really a racial divide, the people would reject them.”

- TMI