By Terence Netto
Apr 21, 11

COMMENT If a mature politics is a pattern of creative responses to society’s vast inertia and small margin for change, then the idea of a merger between DAP and Snap is one of the more stimulating propositions to emerge in recent times.

With one stroke, Alexander of Macedon solved all the mystery of the Gordian knot. A DAP-Snap merger, in one fell swoop, would break the racial mould in which Sarawak’s politics has for the last four decades been mired.

Floated by the DAP’s strategic director, Lim Kit Siang, in the immediate aftermath of his party’s redoubtable showing in the Sarawak polls last Saturday, the idea is a win-win proposition for both parties.

For the DAP, the merger would enable them to field suitable Chinese Malaysian candidates in Dayak-majority seats; as for Snap, they can commend capable Dayak candidates to stand in the urban centres in Sarawak where Chinese voters predominate and who, in the election last week, overwhelmingly preferred DAP candidates to rival, SUPP, ones.

This hypothetical cross-fielding of candidates would begin to bridge the real but unspoken gulf in Sarawak: the chasm in politics and economics that exist between the more affluent Chinese and the majority and disadvantaged Dayaks, especially the Iban.

The gulf is compounded on the one side by condescension and, on the other, by mistrust. It’s the kind of divide that politicians are loath to deal with. In sallying forth to try, Lim delivers another blow to his critics’ unfair stereotype of him as a covert racist. Read the rest of this entry »

By Ong Kian Ming

I did not have time to write a prediction piece for the recently concluded Sarawak state election because I was heavily involved in the campaign this time, rather than analysing it as an outside observer.

But I did tweet and put on Facebook (and placed a few friendly wagers) that the BN would lose its two-thirds majority by failing to win at least 47 seats. I was, not for the first time and certainly not for the last time, wrong.

In this first of my two-part analysis of this election, I will quickly lay out the basis for my initial optimism and then proceed to explain, using the election results, why my prediction did not materialise.

I will pay particular attention to the very complicated voting patterns exhibited by the various non-Muslim bumiputera groups because these voters were, and will likely be, the swing voters come the next general election.
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By Bridget Welsh

The dust has begun to settle on the 10th Sarawak polls with the BN touting its retention of the two-thirds majority as a victory, while Pakatan Rakyat points to the more than doubling of its seats. This was the most competitive state election in Sarawak’s history and was hard fought by both sides.

BN, led by Prime Minister Najib Razak essentially camped in the state for 10 days to assure the two-thirds, while the opposition also focused is national machinery in Sarawak, bringing in the top guns from Peninsular Malaysia and thousands of party workers.

A closer look at the results show that the opposition has made impressive ground, despite its failure to break the two-thirds threshold. Sarawak is no longer BN’s fixed deposit, and trends in mobilisation and support suggest that it is even more likely not to be so unless Sarawak BN radically changes how it governs.

Myth of Chinese-only swing
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