By Pushparani Thilaganathan | FMT

COMMENT Plaza Inn, atop a coffeeshop in Sibu, is flanked by a ‘skyscraper’ and a string of nightclubs on the other end. Evenings are short and the streets are mostly deserted by 9pm.

Life is a straight road. Dawn breaks around 6am, shop shutters rise and the first whiff of brewing coffee reaches up to the hotel room if the windows are open.

If it rains, like it did most nights and some mornings, the mesh of scents is refreshing! Here, where churches are rampant, work is god and toil is truth.

There is no room for perceptions. Only impressions.

But somehow this truth seems to have eluded Barisan Nasional if news reports of how and why they lost their grip on a constituency after a quarter century of presence, is anything to go by.

BN lost because people couldn’t stand the arrogance and power they exuded – from the bag carrying errand boy all the way up the ladder to the ‘kiss my hand’ homage-yearning ministers.

And neither did the voters believe the opposition, Pakatan Rakyat Sarawak – a coalition of DAP, PAS, PKR and SNAP –  to be righteous and blameless.

Sibu simply voted for what they believed to be the better of two evils.

The known devil

It was Saturday, the eve of the by-election. I came downstairs to the coffeeshop for my regular ‘cuppa’.

Just as I was being served, sirens rang and a Mercedes Benz ferrying an important BN official whizzed pass.

”Celaka…hari hari bising,” mumbled Misra and carried on with her work.

You can tell a local from a Peninsular Malaysian, said Misra who works at the coffee shop and earns RM400 a month.

“They have a lot of money. They talk loudly..they walk differently,” she said.

In the run-up to the Sibu parliamentary by-election last Sunday, Peninsular Malaysians accompanying their political warlords arrived in droves.

?Their arrival was a boon to business but a bane to the social fabric of this small town community which had never ever seen the likes of ministers, much less the prime minister and his deputy at such close quarters.

Notwithstanding, this money-muscled entourage came with extensive baggage and police protection. Reports said Sibu had 1,000 policemen in town.

High on the list of baggage and most pertinent to the locals was the contentious ‘Allah” issue and Chief Minister Taib Mahmud’s continuity.

Both issues the BN and its candidate refused to talk about or explain. Every door that BN closed was a window to be opened for the opposition.

According to church-going Joseph, a Chinese, “(we have) so many questions to ask…”

But only the opposition coalition was prepared to answer.

PAS’ Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad and Kota Raja MP Siti Maria Mahmud had met up with several church groups to explain PAS stand on the issue.

The open discussions was a thirst-quencher and believed to have been among the turning points for the Chinese votes. Majority of Sibu’s voters are Christians.   

The unknown angel
They say life is not without its risks.

When you ride the mighty Rajang river and battle the voluminous waters that perennially flood your waking hours, risks is in the blood and fear a momentary hiccup.

Testing out an unknown angel in the form of the Pakatan Rakyat Sarawak coalition is a small risk especially in view of the fact that the state elections is imminent.

Sarawak has to hold its state elections before June 2011.

As such any ensuing discomforts as a result of their collective decision is seen as only temporary.

?Yes, Pakatan has its share of baggage, but fortunately for them, it was not directly relevant to local life.

Sibu is a quiet community. The Ibans speak softly, sometimes you sense shyness and inadequacy but they warm to honesty.

The Malay Melanaus are more confident than the Ibans.

They live closer to the city and are more exposed to the Chinese community. More often than not they are prioritised by government-run agencies over the Ibans.  
The Chinese lord the town in terms of numbers but they too are deeply divided.

There is very little real interaction on a social front between the baseline communities.

People are reticent but considerate, often making sure you’re aware of what you are eating, as both pork and Muslims are bedfellows.

Watching and listening help one read between the lines in this community.

In the recent by-election, what was most obvious was the grassroots acceptance of the opposition.

Many of the opposition parliamentarians and state executive councillors of Penang and Selangor were seen coming in taxis, eating at coffee-shops and living in mediocre hotels.

Many flew AirAsia, and word got around very quickly about how ordinary they were.

?But perhaps the most telling of all was Penang Chief Minister Lim Guang Eng’s persona.

Lim was an equal to ‘god-like’ Chief Minister Taib Mahmud. Equal to the federal ministers who visited Sibu during the by-election. But unlike them he had no entourage, police protection or formality about him.

He was warm, approachable and popular with the local Chinese community. They saw him as fearless and endearing, like a tiger.

With him, at the final ceramah on Saturday, were 60 other Pakatan grassroots leaders from all walks of life hailing a ‘common Malaysia, Malaysia for all’.

Here was the elusive 1Malaysia that premier Najib Tun Razak is struggling to achieve, but which he will not see given his own people’s fear of unity.