Wavelength: Sarawak's vibrant, distinctive democracy
29 Apr 2006
John Teo
New Straits Times

AFTER much anticipation, the people in Sarawak will finally go to the polls on May 20 to elect a new State Legislative Assembly, Southeast Asia’s oldest continually sitting legislature and, with 71 members, the largest State legislature in the country.

It is a predictable and deliberate constitutional exercise set in motion when the Yang di-Pertua Negeri receives in audience the Chief Minister and gives his consent for the existing assembly to be dissolved. It is also the proudest hallmark of the State’s democratic governance, repeated for the ninth time this time around, since Merdeka.

The process has certainly evolved since 1963. Whereas it took months of campaigning and several weeks more of staggered polling in the early years — owing to the remoteness of some of the State’s geographically large rural constituencies — before a new assembly was finally elected, today the whole exercise will be completed in a matter of weeks.

It speaks volumes of the remarkable strides the State has achieved in terms of physical accessibility that polling will be this time — and has already been for several past elections — accomplished in all of one day and the results known well before a new day has dawned.

Sarawak’s contemporary politics has often been described as tame because the State Barisan Nasional coalition commanded all but one of the last State Assembly seats and the current Chief Minister has been in office for a quarter of a century.

But the build-up to any State election has always and unfailingly been anything but tame. Well before polling day becomes a certainty, negotiations would have already gone on in earnest within the governing coalition and amongst the opposition parties over seat allocations.

The number of independent candidates surfacing on nomination day — many often fronting as proxies for unsuccessful nominees — will be a fair barometer of how well backroom party bargaining had gone.

While fairly predictable in ultimate outcomes, this election will again turn on which way the ever-restive Dayak segment of the electorate votes. Being splintered almost as many ways as there are parties contesting the election will not reduce the passion with which the Dayak vote will be courted.

This election will, perhaps, be notable for the number of Dayak political grandees claimed or rumoured to be contesting, campaigning or otherwise financing one or another. The Malay-Melanau vote — the solid bedrock of the State BN — will, as usual, not lack electoral blandishments from the opposition parties originating from the peninsula — Keadilan and Pas — but their tenacity in the face of another, almost certain, crushing defeat will have to be admired.

This leaves the often swing vote of the urbanised Chinese perhaps best disposed to electoral appeals over issues of democratic governance and economic policy and, therefore, traditionally the most promising hunting ground of the opposition parties.

If the vibrancy of a democracy is judged based on its messiness quotient, Sara- wak’s electoral democracy stands up well to any the world has to offer.

It is as if, once every few years, the people of Sarawak collectively let their hair down in a merry party of electioneering exuberance.

But the critical difference here, as opposed to many other places elsewhere in the world, is that Sarawakians know the exuberance must stop once a Government is elected so that both Government and governed can return to the real business of running and developing the State.

Electoral victors will know better than to take all, realising there may be a price to pay come the next election — the ultimate check and balance — if a generally fair division of spoils is not in evidence.

That, in sum, is the secret of success of Sarawak’s distinctive democracy — one that is not just functioning but which actually delivers, despite the inevitable imperfections.