![]() In February 2020, when the Pakatan Harapan (PH) federal government led by Dr Mahathir imploded, GPS swung its support to Muhyiddin Yassin to form the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government. Putting this philosophy in practice was easy. GPS did not give a hoot what happened at the federal level as long as they got what Sarawak wanted. GPS was no longer hiding – the leader of GPS proclaimed that GPS had only one political philosophy: “Sarawak First”. The night in May 2018 when the federal BN lost power in Putrajaya, Sarawak BN announced it was now called GPS (Gabungan Parti Sarawak or Alliance of Sarawak Parties), discarding its decades-old 'BN' branding. The ruling coalition in Sarawak, hitherto called the Sarawak BN, saw its chance to break free. When the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition lost power at the historic federal elections of 2018, the first time UMNO lost government since Malaysia was formed in 1963, it was a watershed moment. Sarawak remains the only state in Malaysia where the entire political class agrees on one thing: Keep the Malayans out, especially its type of polarised peninsula politics. Based on the notion that Sarawak is truly multiracial and multireligious in practice, unlike other parts of Malaysia consumed by ethnic and religious tensions between the Malays and non-Malays, this has largely been true. The political culture Taib and others have promoted are state pride and nationalism, or in today’s terminology, Sarawak identity politics. ![]() Of course, there was a political price for this state of affairs, with Sarawak effectively dominated by 'Rajah' Taib Mahmud. ![]() Taib ring-fenced Sarawak from the toxic Malay-and-Islamist politics found in other parts of the federation. Sarawak to this day remains the only state where UMNO has no presence.įor such reasons, Sarawak has remained cut off from mainstream Malaysian politics for the past 50 years and has developed its own distinct Sarawak political culture. In return for such loyalty to Mahathir's national vision, Taib was granted an unusually high degree of political autonomy from Putrajaya and the dominant UMNO never intruded into Sarawak. ![]() The Borneo states, and their natural resources, were there for peninsula Malaya to exploit, and Sarawak's corrupt politicians were kept in check by Putrajaya with some economic rent and opportunities thrown their way.ĭr Mahathir left internal Sarawak affairs to Taib Mahmud, who became in reality the new 'Rajah' and who ensured that Sarawak was a loyal supporter and unquestioning ally of Mahathir and his UMNO party. He ignored the public sentiment in the Borneo states as he was a man in a hurry to build an industrialised country. Dr Mahathir Mohamad, in particular, in his first stint as prime minister of 22 years, centralised all the powers of the federation in his office. After the war, the British pushed Sarawak and other colonies in the region into what we know today as the Federation of Malaysia.įor the first half-century, Sarawak (and Sabah) were largely ignored in the Federation, with politicians of the Malayan peninsula disdaining their Borneo counterparts as politically underdeveloped. Known globally as the 'White Rajah' of Sarawak, this kingdom would probably still exist today had it not been for the small matter of the Second World War and the Japanese invasion of the region. There's a lot of romanticism attached to Sarawak as it was ruled for a century by the Brookes, an English family which tried to establish a new kingdom and dynasty during the 19th century's era of exploration and colonisation. It's also the place now busy with the start of possibly the most important elections in the state's history, with polling scheduled for 18 December, in 12 days. Most people have known Sarawak as a backwater, sleepy state spanning the northern end of Borneo Island, facing the now-contested waters of the South China Sea. James Chin asks, can the Borneo state's contrasting talk of unity show Malaysia a way out of its religious and racialised gloom?Īs a big and critical part of a nation at the centre of South-east Asia, the state of Sarawak has always played a distinctly different reality in Malaysia's 13-state federation, along with its neighbour Sabah on Borneo Island. Malaysia's Sarawak state goes to the polls this month, in a nation ravaged by the pandemic and political turmoil.
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