NOBODY doubts that the coming general election (GE14) will be a hard-fought battle, perhaps, unlike any we have ever seen before.
But, while much of the country is girding for this so-called mother of all elections, things appear oddly calm in Sarawak. Much of this may be attributed to the fact that unlike in the rest of the country, the battle in Sarawak is only confined to its 31 parliamentary seats, since its current State Assembly was only elected about two years ago.
It was a commanding performance as usual by the Sarawak Barisan Nasional (BN) in the maiden electoral hustings of the then chief minister, the late Tan Sri Adenan Satem. The state BN swept back into power with 72 of the 82 state seats, crucially wresting back from the opposition several urban, Chinese-majority seats.
Come GE14, with a new chief minister leading the charge, Sarawak may be forgiven for being rather sanguine ahead of expected choppy electoral waters nationwide.
So confident has Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Tun Openg been that the state BN is hoping for an electoral encore and targeting to re-take three urban seats to up its overall tally from the 25 seats in the last parliament to 28.
The biggest danger confronting the Sarawak BN may be over-confidence and complacency, but, since GE14 is the first electoral test with Abang Johari as chief minister, it represents almost as huge a political stake for him as it does for Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
Both the political fortunes of the Sarawak chief minister and the prime minister are now more intertwined as probably never before. This is because Abang Johari needs a convincing big win for the state BN not just to secure for Sarawak its role as national king-maker post-GE14, but also to politically buttress Najib.
Abang Johari has often enough stressed that in Najib Sarawak has, perhaps, the best prime minister ever to address the state’s many concerns, not least of which is the evolving process and progress in the devolution of political powers from Putrajaya to the state.
Only a politically secure and confident re-elected prime minister will be in any position to deliver on some politically tricky expectations the state has of the new federal government after May 9.
With much riding on Sarawak reaping further gains in its quest for political autonomy, Abang Johari will expect greater progress on this score in the next few years in order to solidify his own political standing going into the next state election around 2020 or 2021.
It, therefore, is clearly not in the state’s political interest to see any major upset to the national political status quo after GE14. State and national interests are thus aligned as never before. Only a solid electoral performance by Najib and the national BN will ensure that further progress is made to the ongoing economic transformation that the Federal government under Najib is seeking to engineer.
Some further tricky — even politically painful (as witnessed by the necessary, but unpopular Goods and Services Tax) — measures will be necessary to finesse such an ambitious transformation going forward.
Sarawak, therefore, has a role it is otherwise not accustomed to until now: a pivotal one right at the very centre of national life to bring about greater national good, while at the same time ensuring the state’s own interests are front and centre in the overall priorities of the national government.
The opposition will be seeking in GE14 to paint the battle as a binary one, between good and evil. It forgets that nothing is ever so starkly black and white in politics.
The Americans are, perhaps, a classic case in seeing the entire world in either black or white and therefore viewing themselves in some God-given role as the global policeman. Yet, if anything, much global mayhem and destruction have been wrought as the largely unintended result of adopting such a binary global view.
Yet, such a view is hard to shrug off because it is emotionally a very appealing one, whatever the ensuing real and negative consequences be damned.
Malaysians, in their infinite wisdom, cannot afford to fall into such a trap for which there seems little to no chance of escape. If Sarawak, at such a critical, and maybe, unique juncture in our collective national history, can and does stand up to disabuse the nation of such misguided idealism, it will have contributed immeasurably to our continuing journey towards greater progress.
The writer views developments in the nation, the region and the wider world from his vantage point in Kuching, Sarawak