ALMOST exactly a month after Pakatan Harapan (PH) took over the reins of the Federal Government from Barisan Nasional (BN), the political ramifications still reverberate.
Meeting in Kuching on June 12, the four parties of the Sarawak Barisan Nasional — the dominant Parti Pesaka Bumiputra Bersatu (PBB), Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS), the Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) and the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP) — cobbled together a new state governing coalition called Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS).
The move had been anticipated and managed to send out a somewhat astute mixture of what some political analysts have taken to calling “state nationalism” and political pragmatism.
The “state nationalism” idea was born out of a rather keenly felt desire on the part of many in Sarawak to chart a path distinctly its own, the clearest manifestation of which has been the quest in recent years to claim (some even suggest to reclaim) greater autonomy for the state to run its own affairs.
It is an idea which, incidentally, the newly created GPS shares with Sarawak PH, reflecting at once what a potent sentiment this has generated and how all parties vying for the votes of Sarawakians must now seriously take cognisance of.
The decision of the state ruling coalition is politically pragmatic in the sense that it also fully recognises that the state government will be better off by seeking to “cooperate and collaborate” with the new powers-that-be in Putrajaya (as an official media statement issued after the decision to form GPS promised) rather than to oppose and confront. The GPS move has apparently met with approval from Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad whose immediate reaction to it had been to suggest it will bolster the strength of the PH government.
GPS will, of course, bring to Parliament a bloc of 19 members of parliament. The prime minister is obviously hoping the move will consolidate his hold on power even if GPS will not be formally aligned to PH.
The interesting thing to watch going forward must be how the formation of GPS plays out politically within Sarawak. While GPS’ political position as the state government remains formidable and unassailable, the 14th General Election (GE14) and its aftermath expose vulnerabilities which it must watch and which Sarawak PH will seek to fully exploit in the run-up to the next state election that must be held by 2021.
The results of the just-concluded general election showed that the rural vote bank that GPS and BN before it relied on may no longer be as solid as it once was. The gains that Sarawak PH made in GE14 extended beyond urban constituencies. Unless the reasons for this are quickly and honestly identified and remedial measures taken to address them, further political shocks may await GPS the next time it goes on the hustings.
Two broad political trends seem obvious enough. One is greater public awareness about the imperative for greater governance transparency in order to curb public excesses, wastage and corruption. The same state coalition (more or less) has ruled the state since 1970 and not unlike the BN nationally, political complacency or worse may have set in.
GPS has little time to lose if it is to compete head-on with Sarawak PH in the coming state election. Sarawak PH will have been energised by being part of the government at national level and possibly further strengthened if it can translate good intentions into positive and concrete actions and results on the ground.
A more difficult but not impossible way for GPS to reinvent itself and keep it one step ahead of Sarawak PH will be to meld GPS into a single political party and give fresh impetus to the notion that Sarawak is really different and even ahead of the rest of the country politically.
Although the way politics is organised in Sarawak has always been not as rigidly communal-based as in the peninsula, a not dissimilar racially and ethnically based political hierarchy nevertheless still manifests itself at the state level and much state political discourse goes along such lines.
PH may represent progress in that it for the first time attempts to shift the country into a post-racial political era even if it still is a hodgepodge of parties dedicated in varying degrees to multiracialism in practice.
As a state where no ethnic group forms a numerical majority, it should, in fact, be more feasible and easier for Sarawak to take the lead into a non-racial political future.