Are the tripartite talks among the federal government and the state governments of Sabah and Sarawak over contentious issues related to the federal-state relationships heading for a satisfactory conclusion soon?
The signs are rather mixed. Official word has been put out that roughly half of the issues on the table are resolved as the mutually agreed deadline for resolution draws close.
Recent remarks emanating both from Putrajaya and Petra Jaya (the Sarawak administrative centre) appear to suggest all is not well, at least over probably the most contentious issue of all: that over money matters.
Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng has all but dashed any hope of the two states securing a speedy commitment by the federal government to make good on its election promise of 20-per cent oil and gas royalty to the states.
Sarawak State Assembly Speaker Datuk Amar Asfia Nasser, who heads a bipartisan Sarawak committee overseeing the talks, meanwhile, issued what looked like an ultimatum to Petronas to pay up by the end of October its portion of the 5-per cent sales tax the state had earlier imposed on the oil and gas industry.
There is some urgency behind the ultimatum as Sarawak Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Openg secured a state budget for the current year based on the assumption the state would receive revenues arising from the sales tax. He is mandated to table a new budget for next year before the year is out.
Lim had earlier pointedly accused the state government of heading towards bankruptcy by budgeting to spend on revenues not yet received. Is he hinting that Putrajaya will adopt a hard-line stance against Petronas coughing up the tax the state had imposed? All this is happening, no doubt, against the backdrop of the upcoming state election which Sarawak must call by the third quarter of 2021.
The Sarawak government is on a spending spree rolling out several big-ticket infrastructure projects this year in hopes that a feel-good economic environment will aid it in securing a fresh electoral mandate, the first under the untested leadership of Abang Johari and also unprecedented in that he will be fighting against a state opposition alliance that is the government at federal level.
Thus, even as state and federal leaders all congregated in Kuching and put on a show of congeniality for the sake of Malaysia Day, the political undercurrents were barely concealed. Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad took the opportunity to formally launch the Sarawak chapter of his own party, with some letting it be known that after storming Putrajaya in 2018, the Pakatan Harapan (PH) ruling alliance is ready to storm Petra Jaya next.
Not to be outdone, Abang Johari had a rather controversial and probably ill-advised meeting with Pas president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang, given that the former had repeatedly stressed that Sarawak would not be drawn into the way politics is played over in the peninsula and that the state would strike its own political path.
This meeting set tongues wagging as to whether the Sarawak ruling coalition or at least Abang Johari’s own Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu will eventually join the recently consummated Umno-Pas alliance, either before or after the next general election.
The PH federal government also gives every indication it will press all advantages of incumbency to take on the Sarawak government electorally.
The battle will be fought and won over largely rural voters and here the federal government has just announced that it will soon appoint and pay its own set of village committee chiefs in Sarawak. With such a federal decision, the newly-appointed chiefs will be pitted against the set of village elders appointed by the state.
The political battle is thus joined down to the traditional grassroots levels. The state-federal talks over autonomy and money transfers — at least in Sarawak — thus risk getting hijacked as both state and federal governments and leaders posture in the run-up to the state election.
Too much is at stake, however, for either side to let politics trump everything. There is a need to pull back from the brink. In the end, it will probably be left to the prime minister and the chief minister to cut some deal and show the nation as a whole that they can act in statesman-like fashion.
Failing that, things can get ugly and out-of-hand, especially if state-federal disagreements get dragged into the legal arena, opening up a whole Pandora’s box and leaving any eventual settlement uncertain, if not entirely elusive.
The writer views developments in the nation, the region and the wider world from his vantage point in Kuching, Sarawak